Are you a budding entrepreneur looking to take the plunge into starting your own business? That’s an exciting and intimidating journey, but with the right planning, you can make it a successful one. From developing a comprehensive business plan to identifying key partners that share your vision for growth, there are plenty of ways for entrepreneurs to ensure their success in the early stages of launching their businesses. In this blog post, we will provide some tips and strategies on how new small business owners can get off on the right footing. Read on as we explore what it takes to launch a successful business!

1) Have a Plan: As they say, “fail to plan, plan to fail.” Creating a comprehensive business plan is an essential step in launching your business. Your business plan should include detailed descriptions of who you are, what products or services you’re offering, who your target audience is, and how you plan to gain market share.

2) Research Your Target Audience: You need to know your audience before you can even start to market your business. Research who they are, where they hang out, what their interests and needs are, and which channels are the most effective for reaching them. Once you understand your target audience, you can create a tailored marketing strategy to get their attention and convert them into customers.

3) Raise the Necessary Capital: Starting a business like Black Tie Moving requires significant capital investment, so you need to ensure that you have the necessary funds before you launch. Consider traditional funding options such as business loans or venture capital, as well as crowdfunding platforms that allow everyday people to invest in your business.

4) Network and Build Partnerships: In the early days of launching a business, it’s important to build relationships with industry partners and potential investors. Get out there and network at events, trade shows, conferences, and seminars to meet people who can act as key partners in the growth of your business.

5) Manage Your Time: Running a business can be incredibly time consuming, so it’s important to learn how to make the most of your time. Prioritize tasks and set realistic goals for yourself each day so that you can manage your workload and stay on track.

With these tips in mind, you should be well on your way to launching a successful business.

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The trucking industry has become a highly competitive environment in recent years. This suggests that there are plenty of opportunities for truckers to earn money. But it also means that there will be fierce competition for the best routes and drivers.

As the industry continues to grow, so does its environmental impact. Statistics reveal that US trucks travel about 93 billion miles annually, most going eight miles per gallon. This releases almost six million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2). Such numbers show how an essential part of the nation’s economy contributes so much to its carbon footprint. 

Meanwhile, a 2021 survey showed that 35% of carriers feel pressured to minimize carbon emissions. The main reason is that government regulations reprimand them as part of a massive move to sustainable practices. 

Since many trucking business owners are adopting this trend, it may be time for you to do the same. That way, you can keep up with the competition while advancing sustainability in the industry. 

Here are five steps to make your trucking business more sustainable.

A truck’s fuel plays the most significant role in its environmental impact, as diesel consumption produces tons of CO2. This means your trucking business can cut its carbon footprint if your fleet switches to something more efficient.  

Finding an alternative fuel source that doesn’t contribute too much to the environment is crucial. One option is biodiesel, a renewable fuel made from animal fats or vegetable oils. Another is ethanol, which comes from corn and other plant materials. You may also use compressed natural gas, which is more cost-effective than diesel or gasoline. 

You may also use a diesel oxidation catalyst (DOC) to reduce emissions from fossil fuels. An expert in engine parts defines diesel cat converters as essential to the emission system, breaking down pollutants into less harmful elements to reduce their environmental impact.

Route planning dictates the efficiency of your trucking business. This involves knowing the most dependable routes and the locations for transfers and drop-offs. Having good routes lets you reduce delivery delays while cutting fuel consumption. 

An excellent way to optimize route plans is through the help of a global positioning system (GPS). This tool allows dispatchers to monitor traffic situations in real-time, letting them reroute drivers to avoid jams.

If the driver loses their way, GPS can also help them by providing accurate coordinates of their position. They won’t consume more fuel by wasting time along roads they don’t know.

Speaking of wasting time, consider cutting empty miles as well.

These refer to the mileage that a vehicle spends without a load. When heavy-duty trucks are left without hauls, all the fuel they expend goes to nothing. Each passing second of this means more fuel going to waste and more emissions released into the atmosphere.

To keep your fleet efficient, try minimizing empty miles through backhauling. This refers to taking freight from one key point to another rather than directly from origin to destination. It’s a good idea for long hauls because it reduces fuel consumption, emissions, and operational costs.

As the people at the wheel, drivers play an essential role in maintaining sustainability. How they operate the truck, how many hours they put in, and how they drive affect the overall fuel consumption of your fleet. 

Knowing this, educating them about sustainability is an excellent way to get them on board with your efficiency efforts. 

You can do this by providing your drivers with materials discussing how they manage their trucks. These can include instruction manuals and flyers detailing the best practices for fuel efficiency on the road.

Idle times refer to when a vehicle is not moving at all. This occurs when a driver is at toll booths, at a rest stop, or warming up the engine before departure. Over time, they can rack up fuel costs.

Reducing these instances may be difficult to pull off. But small, smart steps make it possible.  

For example, you can use a geofencing tool to help your fleet find more efficient routes. Another thing you can do is conduct tire inspections to reduce breakdowns in the middle of transit. Doing these things lets you optimize delivery times while saving gas.

Sustainability is becoming the primary concern of many industries in light of the crises we have witnessed throughout the years. You risk running against legislation and competition unless your trucking business catches up.

These steps are just the beginning of a steady progress toward long-term, ethical, and forward-thinking business practices. Adopting them will help your trucking fleet remain competitive in an evolving industry.

The post 5 Tips To Make Your Trucking Business More Sustainable appeared first on Entrepreneurship Life.

The road to becoming a successful trader isn’t for the faint of heart. The challenge also tends to prove more difficult for new traders. However, no matter where you are in the journey, it’s important to remember that this is a marathon, not a sprint.

But we’re forgetting one key ingredient: capital. No one can launch a trading career without any dough. Acknowledging this, you have probably looked into prop trading firms.

But knowing where to begin can be its own challenge with all of the different platforms out there. Which is the best for your money?

This is where the Earn2Trade review you’re reading comes center stage. In this review, we will cover everything you need to know about the platform so you can profit from it–literally.

Founded in 2016, Earn2Trade was developed by educators and traders with the mission of helping individuals get funded. The approach is two-pronged–they are an education provider who trains people to trade as well as a recruitment firm for funded investors.

Earn2Trade is one of many trading education platforms, teaching trading techniques from the most basic level to more advanced, technical aspects. Traders can utilize what they learn for personal trading or take a stab at getting funded via the virtual trading simulation tool within the Earn2Trade platform.

Most users opt for the latter–they sign up with the service with the goal of passing the evaluation program at the end of their training. Earn2Trade connects those who pass with one of their proprietary trading firm partners (Helios Trading Partners or Appius Trading Limited).

Earn2Trade offers three paths to help traders get funded: the Trader Career Path, the Gauntlet and the Gauntlet Mini. All three utilize the aforementioned virtual trading simulation tool.

Each track comes with a unique set of program challenges, rules and limitations. Additionally, they all include video sessions, webinars, news feeds and charting tools for educational purposes.

Though education is how Earn2Trade markets its platform, it shouldn’t be lost on you that it is still a business. Clients rely on Earn2Trade to bring them capable traders who can succeed in the financial markets.

Earn2Trade clearly wanted to be sure potential traders were serious about the program with a name like the “Gauntlet.” But, for those with the grit and grind, the Gauntlet can be used to see great profits.

Here’s the nuts and bolts: the Gauntlet is a 60-day assessment that comes with a one-time payment of $429. The set of rules that comes with the program include:

Apologies for sounding like an infomercial but that’s not all! Additionally, those who are successful in the program are granted a conditional offer: if you reach a $5,000 profit, you are eligible to join the prop firm as a limited partner. 

The mini version of the Gauntlet is a 15-day assessment where account sizes range between $50,000 and $200,000. The price per month for this program ranges between $170 and $550.

Like its big brother, the Gauntlet Mini comes with its own profit goals, daily loss limit and EOD drawdown. Other specifics include:

Finally, the Earn2Trade Trader Career Path is a progression-based evaluation that grants you a funded account upon completion. At $150 per month, this program comes with a Ninja Trader or Finamark license, access to Earn2Trade’s educational catalog, a 60-day Journalytix license and a simulator profile for practice.

This program is best for beginners who don’t want the hassle of a time restraint. Traders begin with $25,000 to use in future exchanges and, though this program offers more freedom, it still comes with a set of rules:

You should know by now that getting an Earn2Trade funded account is no walk in the park. Though it’s not easy, the goal couldn’t be more straightforward: learn, do well, pass the test and then get funded.

But don’t let this discourage you. With Earn2Trade’s educational resources and life-like virtual simulators, all it takes to get funded is a little desire, dedication and discipline.

If this is you, click here to get started with Earn2Trade today!

The post Earn2Trade Review – What You’ve Been Waiting For appeared first on Entrepreneurship Life.

With endless sources of financial news and constantly fluctuating stocks, it’s nearly impossible to become an expert on every stock. That’s where investment newsletters for buying stocks can help. They provide investors with informed recommendations and analysis without a significant time commitment. But with so many newsletters available, it can be overwhelming to choose the right one.

Legendary investors, like Warren Buffett, rely on roundtable discussions to guide their investment decisions. But for regular retail investors, investment newsletters are a more accessible alternative.

These newsletters offer periodic advice on new stock ideas, investing strategies, portfolio management techniques, stock market news, and other information to help you make better decisions.

To help you cut through the noise, we’ve compiled a list of the top 3. For each pick, we’ll provide the value you’ll receive, the price you’ll pay, and who each newsletter is best suited for. The more high-quality information you have, the better your chances of increasing your rewards and minimizing risk.

Although detailed, our list is short and only focuses on the top 3, for a more comprehensive list, check out this best investment newsletter article.

The Motley Fool’s Rule Breakers investment newsletter is a perfect option for those looking to invest in disruptive technology stocks. While its sibling, Stock Advisor, covers various industries, Rule Breakers focuses on companies that can potentially change their entire industry.

Early investors in these companies can achieve massive returns if they are successful. However, this type of investing also comes with increased volatility, and many of Rule Breakers’ recommendations may not be profitable yet.

The service offers two new stock picks each month, along with community access and investing resources. The regular cost of Rule Breakers is $299 per year, but new members can sign up for $99 for the first year.

If you are comfortable with the potential risks and rewards of investing in disruptive technology, Rule Breakers may be the right choice for you.

The Oxford Communique is an investment newsletter by Alexander Green, who is a Wall Street veteran with over 20 years of experience. He’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Businessweek, and Forbes, and he’s the Chief Investment Officer at The Oxford Club.

Green’s experience and track record should give you the confidence you need to consider this fantastic option. The Oxford Communique is the more advanced of the Oxford Club’s main subscription options, marketed towards individual investors with some experience under their belts.

By subscribing to this investment newsletter, you can get direct investment recommendations sent right to your email inbox. These recommendations are based on a model portfolio created by professional investors, which can help you make informed decisions.

In addition, the subscription includes a host of other features, including monthly stock picks, weekly email updates, and bonus reports. The annual price starts at $79, the service also comes with a 1 year money-back guarantee, giving you peace of mind knowing that you can try it risk-free.

Timothy Sykes is a well-known penny stock trader and founder of Profit.ly, who also provides trader education through various newsletter subscriptions. Subscribers can receive daily stock recommendations, trade alerts, and informational videos.

Sykes became a legend by turning $12,000 in bar mitzvah gift money into millions through penny stock trading and has since created a stock-picking service and educational content to help others replicate his success.

His Tim Alerts daily newsletter provides penny stock picks and stock watchlists, which subscribers can receive through email, SMS, or real-time push notifications.

The subscription also includes access to a live chat room and a library of over 7,000 videos to train you on penny stock trading. Timothy Sykes offers two subscription options: Tim’s Alerts for $74.95 a month and Pennystocking Silver for $149.95 a month.

Investment newsletters can be valuable to investors at every level of expertise, providing endless sources of financial news without a significant time commitment. However, there is no “best” investment newsletter, as some are geared toward general stock investing, some are good for options, and some are for day trading. It all depends on your individual investing style.

The newsletters mentioned in this article are some of the most reliable available, but it doesn’t hurt to sign up for multiple if they interest you, especially since several are free.

Investment newsletters are a great way to gain insight and recommendations from veteran traders, but they shouldn’t be your only horse in the race. You need to use every bit of information at your disposal to gain the necessary edge.

That’s why it’s vital to use other stock research tools like the best stock research websites and stock screeners to help pick winners.

Even with the best investment newsletters and research tools at your fingertips, remember that investing is never a sure thing. Always do your due diligence, diversify your portfolio, and invest only what you can afford to lose. Happy investing!

The post Best Investment Newsletters Reviewed appeared first on Entrepreneurship Life.

Looking to get better at trading? Want to optimize your trades and make better decisions? The answer is simple: start keeping a trading journal!

It’s a tool that is often overlooked by beginner traders, but the truth is that it can be one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal.

With so many trading journal options available today, it can be overwhelming for newer traders to choose the right one. But fear not, we’ve done the research for you and compiled a list of the best trading journal apps available. From analyzing stocks, options, futures, forex, and cryptocurrency trades, these apps have got you covered.

So if you’re serious about improving your trading game and making better decisions, read on to discover the best trading journal apps and learn how to make the most of them.

We only cover our 3 favorites, if you want a list with more options, read this best trading journals article.

A trading journal is simply a log that records details about each trade, including what was traded, when, why, and how much money was made or lost. And while you can manually keep a trading journal, using online journal apps can make the process easier and provide valuable insights.

By maintaining a trading journal, you can strategically manage your trades by analyzing the effectiveness of your techniques over time. It can also help you manage your emotions, ensuring you keep a cool head and avoid making impulsive decisions based on fear or greed. Plus, with the automated statistical and analytical tools offered by online journal apps, it’s easier to identify key trends and patterns in your trading history.

So, whether you’re a beginner or experienced trader, a trading journal can be an invaluable tool to help you succeed in the market. In the following sections, we’ll explore some of the best trading journal options available and their unique pros and cons to help you find the best fit for your trading style.

Trademetria is a trading journal platform that is well-suited for beginner and advanced traders who want to take a deep dive into the data and statistics behind their past trades.

Although it lacks some of the forecasting features of other platforms, Trademetria compensates for this by providing detailed analytics that can inform future strategies.

Trademetria doesn’t offer an automated option to track trades in real-time, which may be a downside for active traders. Instead, it only allows manual entry of previous trades. The platform’s analytical tools, such as backtesting and the trade simulator, can help you better navigate the financial markets and improve your trading style.

While it may not be the best fit for everyone, the advanced features of Trademetria make it worth considering for traders who value detailed analytics and insights to help form their trading decisions.

Tradervue is a robust trading journal that was launched in 2011, making it one of the earliest available. It offers excellent broker importing support for widely used platforms like Interactive Brokers, Fidelity, and E*TRADE.

Tradervue’s features, including automatic trade marking on charts, fee tracking, and community sharing, have made it popular among hedge funds as well as professional institutions. The platform is suitable for traders of stocks, options, futures, and forex.

The major drawback is that it does not provide real-time data. Tradervue’s strength lies in its reporting features, including its risk analysis reports. With these reports, traders can quickly identify areas for improvement in their trading strategy, and adjust their approach for future success.

Tradervue also offers loss charts, which allow traders to identify patterns in their trading techniques that are either positive or negative.

The platform can be used for free, but with some limitations. Subscribing to its monthly plans, which range from $29 to $49 per month, is recommended to take advantage of its full capabilities. Overall, Tradervue is a great trading journal with advanced features available at an affordable price.

Edgewonk is a trading journal platform and educational resource that offers logging tools for all major markets, including forex, stocks, futures, CFDs, crypto, and commodities.

The platform adds a “gamification” element to trading, making it unique compared to other trading journals. Edgewonk offers a flat annual fee of $169 for users outside the European Union. For EU users, the pricing is a bit higher due to VAT inclusion.

One of the standout features of Edgewonk is its AI testing tools, which include strategic backtesting and future account projections based on your trading strategy. Users can even input trades they chose not to take and see how they would have performed if they had.

This feature helps refine trading strategies by showing what might have happened and what could happen in the future. Edgewonk’s website also offers a free, robust blog section to educate traders on markets, trading strategies, and the platform itself.

While there is a bit of a learning curve to using Edgewonk, the platform is highly customizable and perfect for those with high volumes of trading activity. The yearly payment allows for tracking unlimited trades, running custom statistics, using a trade simulator, and creating new trading strategies in the Trade Planner.

Using a trading journal is an essential part of becoming a successful trader. It allows you to analyze your trades and refine your strategy over time. While there are many trading journal options available, it’s important to choose one that best fits your needs and trading style.

Whether you decide to use a free option or invest in a paid platform with more advanced features, the most important thing is that you commit to using and maintaining your journal regularly.

Remember, a trading journal is just one tool in your trading toolbox. To maximize your success, you should also utilize other resources such as stock research websites and stock screeners to supplement your analysis. By using all of the available resources at your disposal, you can gain a significant edge in the financial markets and achieve your trading goals.

The post The 3 Best Trading Journals For 2023 appeared first on Entrepreneurship Life.

JADEN BRODEUR

Co-Founder of Luma, a company that integrates UV-C light technology to self-clean and eradicate 99.99% of bacteria from your drinking water.

Luma is a hydration company that’s reinventing the outdated reusable water bottle industry.

Luma 1.0, our first product, is a reusable water bottle that integrates UV-C technology to eradicate 99.99% of bacteria from your drinking water. We’re currently developing a carbon filtration component to additionally treat water for non-bacterial contaminants left unaffected by UV-C alone.

Our long-term mission is to replace single-use plastic’s role in our hydration infrastructure, for the betterment of our bodies and planet.

Business ideas were my nerdy interest growing up. Startup stories inspired me and adding new ideas to my notes was an everyday thing. My biggest inspirations came from big brands I thought were cool and wanted to be seen using, like Apple and Nike. So I inherently took an especially strong interest in consumer, brand, and design. I also liked to think big. Big problems, big markets, big opportunities.

I got hung up on reusable water bottles when I got to high school. It felt like out of nowhere, everyone had one. At first, they were compelling to me because they’re a product at the intersection of my interests in consumer, brand, and design. The market was massive and growing, and there was no undisputed leader. Then I really went down the habit hole. Why was the market growing so quickly? Sustainability? Were people trying to drink less bottled water? But why was bottled water consumption still rising exponentially? Why was that so bad? Why was there no innovation in the product category?

This went on in bits and pieces for years. The more I learned about sustainability and the water bottle space, the more I thought something was there…that one day, we’ll see a company built on innovation, premium quality, and impeccable design, and they’ll do to water bottles what the iPhone did to cell phones.

Years later, I met my co-founder, Willy, while he was working on the original product concept for Luma. His idea was for a water bottle that used UV-C light to self clean, inspired by his OCD and germaphobia. He was a student at BYU in the same year of undergrad as me, and he launched a Kickstarter project to fund the development of an MVP, when I came across the project while startup scouting for an internship.

We got to know each other well over the span of nearly 2 years while Willy worked through the development process and finally completed production of MVP units. After that, the project had fallen by the wayside. Willy was finishing up undergrad while working full time at a consumer company in Utah, and I was working full time for the same company I’d interned for, but I was ready to build something.

We had a series of long conversations in early 2021 about the project’s biggest obstacles, what was needed to move it forward, how it could happen, and our vision for the future. We decided to team up and give it a full-go, and formed Luma Hydration Inc. a few months later.

My favorite part of being an entrepreneur is being in a position of autonomy. For someone who’s overflowing with passion, creativity, and has high conviction in themselves, there’s no better feeling than being able to work with total freedom. Being an entrepreneur provides me with that.

The most challenging part for me is needing to spread my time across many things at once, which comes from being a small team. Learning to juggle multiple projects simultaneously continues to be a big learning curve for me.

The most exciting moment? Seeing a picture of Tiger Woods using our product was probably the most surreal moment. I’m a golf nut and grew up watching him, so seeing that happen was a dream come true.

Raising our pre-seed was a wild ride. We started raising in summer of 2021 when we were ready to move forward with our new manufacturer on Luma 1.0 development. All we needed was capital. I remember being so naïve going into that first round. I’d never raised capital before, but I had a background in startup financing and I figured it’d be something I’d excel in, or at least get the hang of quickly.

It was a stressful time. We were young, first time founders starting a consumer goods company in an extremely saturated market, and we didn’t have a launch-ready product yet. Heck, we didn’t even have a finished website up at the time. Needless to say, it didn’t go as easy as planned. We were just too early for most investors to give us the time of day, and we didn’t have extensive friends & family networks to lean on.

In August, we closed our first investment from a solo angel. Over the course of the next 8 or 9 months, we pieced together a pre-seed of roughly $250k from angels and one small fund, all of whom were investing in the passion, scrappiness, and resilience we had as entrepreneurs.

Looking back, I’m really grateful for what we went through. Raising that first round was one of most important stages of my growth as an entrepreneur, and we’re a much better company today because of it.

My co-founder, Willy, is one awesome dude. I think we have a really unique relationship because we’re so much alike in some ways and opposites in others, on both a personal and professional level. The thing I appreciate most about Willy is his commitment. It takes a very resilient, determined person to persevere through all the ups and downs of building a company, and for me to have that in Willy is something I’m extra grateful for.

That things never go exactly as planned, and because that’s the case, there’s a fine line between adequate planning and over-planning. This has been a big learning curve for me. The more experience I’ve gained as an entrepreneur, the more I’ve learned that it’s nearly impossible to predict exactly how or when certain things will go. Embracing this more and more over time has had a huge impact on how we go about company planning.

Our roadmap, strategy, and us as entrepreneurs need to be flexible. Fortunately, this is something my co-founder and I are both inherently good at it.

We definitely had our fair share of stress from supply chain issues this past year, although mainly just on the importing side. Our first production run was complete in early June, and we were anticipating a roughly 30-day import timeline. That turned out to be far from accurate. We hit delays at pretty much every point possible. First it was a shortage of cargo ships, then it was a congested docking port so the ship stayed at sea, then it was a shortage of labor to remove our container from the ship, then it was a shortage of rail equipment. It was especially stressful since we’d launched our private beta in anticipation of our inventory arriving shortly, so this was just a nightmare and forced us to pivot our rollout plans.

Fortunately, we don’t rely on frequent production runs or imports, so it’s been smooth sailing since our inventory arrived and we can plan well in advance for future production.

My workday schedule is a bit all over the place and a big goal of mine this year is to develop a more consistent routine. The struggle for me is all rooted in my sleep schedule. I have a habit of working late into the night which I’m trying hard to break.

I just recently started getting into meditation which I try to do every morning before starting the day. In the early evening I like to take a couple of hours around 5ish to separate myself from work and do something active with friends, although sometimes it’s tricky depending on what we have going on at the moment.

To stay productive, I’m a religious user of Google Calendar, iOS Reminders, and Apple Notes. I use Google Calendar to time block projects I’m working on, Reminders to keep a running list of small things I need to handle both for the company and my personal life, and Notes to document thoughts popping into my head throughout the day.

Passion: The best entrepreneurs have an immensely strong and genuine passion for what they’re working on. Love it. All of it. Be obsessed.

Humility: Every founder makes mistakes. Good founders have the humility to accept when they’ve made a mistake or a poor decision, and then correct it.

Unwavering Resilience: Entrepreneurship is full of ups and downs. The ups can feel euphoric, and the downs can feel dreadful. Founders need resilience to push through the lows. When all is said and done, the day a startup fails is just the day the founders give up.

My biggest piece of advice: fall in love with the process, not the destination. Appreciate the challenges and embrace the failures along the way.

I remember when I was 5 years old, in preschool, there was a table full of jigsaw puzzles. Any time you finished a puzzle, you’d get a sticker next to your name on the puzzle chart. It essentially resembled a leaderboard, with the amount of stickers next to your name as the score. I obsessed over it. I’d spend hours every day doing puzzles, committed to having the most stickers next to my name, and running up the score so no one could catch me.

Looking back, this was the first display of my competitive nature that I can remember. As a 5 year old, I obviously had no understanding of any deeper meaning to that. As I’ve gotten older, I find it interesting to look back at my childhood where I innately displayed characteristics that are still so present in my behavior today as an adult.

Probably Will Ahmed, founder & CEO of Whoop.

I think Will is an incredible founder and I think Whoop is an incredible company. Everything they’ve had to go through to build an exceptional product while competing with some of the biggest companies in the world, like Nike, Apple, and Microsoft as they entered the space of wearable technology, it’s so inspiring.

I like to spend time with friends. My closest friends are all pretty competitive, so that usually means we’re playing something. Golf, pickleball, pool, darts…if there’s a winner and a loser, we’ll play it.

I try to stay active and spend time outdoors.

Playing golf helps me cover that from spring through fall. Winters can be brutal here in Connecticut. I picked up pickleball this year with friends and I’ve been loving it.

“Control what you can control, embrace what you can’t.”

I’ve always loved this quote, and I try to remember it whenever I’m facing a challenge or feel stressed. It helps me remember how to direct my energy, and makes everything seem so much simpler.

Ah, this is the toughest question in the game.

Success at the most basic level is just the accomplishment of a goal. I’m an ambitious person, as most entrepreneurs are, and my goals are constantly evolving and growing as more progress is made. So on a personal level, I don’t think I’ll ever reach a point where I’m satisfied and not pushing further, and I think that’s the beauty in it. Success for me is the constant effort in growing as a person, with pride in the person I’ve become, and excitement for the progress I’m striving for.

Books:

1. Open, by Andre Agassi

2. How to Win Friends & Influence People, by Dale Carnegie

3. Shoe Dog, by Phil Knight

Health & Fitness:

1. Golf

2. Pickleball

3. 12 Chlorella tablets daily

Brands:

1. Uniqlo t-shirts

2. White Nike sneakers

3. 47 Brand Hats

Products:

1. Figma

2. Spline

3. Spotify

Newsletters & Podcasts:

1. How I Built This with Guy Raz

2. Chew On This

3. The Herd (for my sports content)

Upcoming Travel Spots:

1. Japan

2. London

3. Australia

LAMINE ZARRAD

Founder & CEO of StellarFi, a company set out to solve one of the biggest economic problems faced by American consumers - access to credit.

StellarFi is a credit-building platform and public benefit corporation on a mission to disrupt the U.S. poverty cycle and provide credit access to 132 million Americans with low or no credit.

Members can begin using StellarFi through a tiered monthly subscription, which empowers them to build credit by paying the bills they already have, such as streaming services, rent and phone bills. We report bill payments made through StellarFi’s platform to the three major credit bureaus – Experian®, TransUnion® and Equifax® – building a positive payment history for our members. The website application launched in June 2022, and we are rolling out a mobile app later this year.

I’ve been on a trajectory of creating solutions for larger problems. I went from optimizing logistics at one military base to tackling banking challenges across a whole industry, and now, I want to take on issues facing entire populations and help those whose lives have been impacted by a lack of financial literacy or a string of financial challenges.

My goal is to leverage technology to help others succeed, but growing up, my goal was about trying to survive. I was born in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan SSR, which was a former republic of the USSR. When the Soviet Union fell, my family was forced to escape from an ongoing ethnic war on Armenians, which my mother was.

Suddenly, my comfortable childhood was turned into being a refugee with nothing but a bag of clothes. After fleeing to Moscow, eventually making it to the United States and going to school here, I joined the Marine Corps.

On my first deployment to Iraq, my inner entrepreneur really took over. I always noticed inefficiencies and assessed processes, and I would pitch ways to improve infrastructure to the colonel running the base I was on. Thankfully he was very receptive to my ideas and allowed me to help manage logistics for our base of 20,000 personnel. The resourcefulness that I honed as a refugee and immigrant helped me make significant improvements to our infrastructure and logistics during that time.

After the military, I earned a business degree and landed my first job in financial services at Merrill Lynch. I wanted to continue in the financial sector, so I went to grad school to study economic policy and worked for a hedge fund. Then, I accepted a position as a bank examiner in the U.S. Treasury’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

As a regulator, I had a unique, 360-degree view of the banking system and saw that banks, both large and small, were (and still are) profoundly reactive instead of proactive. This prompted my interest in how we could use data-driven technology to help banks make more advantageous decisions and provide better experiences to customers. These experiences led to the birth of my first startup, Tokken. Since then, I’ve founded Joust (acquired by ZenBusiness) and now StellarFi.

The inspiration is the double entendre of “stellar” credit that signifies financial excellence and illustrates the grandness of our cosmic concept.

My favorite part of the journey is the process of creation. I love synthesizing seemingly unrelated concepts into something completely new and then bringing that idea to life. The least liked experience is having to fire people. I always take it personally.

The most challenging moment for the company and me is always the decision to actually commit to the concept full time because there’s no going back once you head down that road. You either succeed or fail, but either way, you must complete the journey.

In March, StellarFi closed a $7.2M initial funding round. The round was led by Acrew Capital and co-led by Trust Ventures with participation from Accomplice Ventures, Fiat Ventures, Vera Equity, Permit Ventures, Kindergarten Ventures, and angel investors.

Since March, we’ve brought on amazing talent from across the globe and publicly launched the StellarFi credit-building platform. With thousands of members now using the platform, we’re busy improving the current experience and designing valuable features we’re excited to launch later this year.

My founding partners are Stacey Tisdale and Angela Yee. Stacey Tisdale is an award-winning TV broadcast financial journalist, financial behavior expert and CEO and co-host of Wealth Wednesdays, a digital financial empowerment platform. Angela Yee is a serial entrepreneur. She co-hosts the nationally syndicated morning show The Breakfast Club and Wealth Wednesdays, and she hosts her own podcast.

Stacey and Angela are both financial literacy advocates and have done great work to inform and empower their communities. StellarFi is a public benefit corporation with a mission to improve the financial well-being of Americans. Stacey and Angela share this vision and they have the tools to speak to the underserved communities we want to reach.

People deserve more. Anyone who pays rent should have the opportunity to buy a home, and no one should be stuck in a cycle of not being able to get credit because they don’t already have credit, or paying more for things because they have less financial power. That’s what inspired me to found StellarFi as a public benefit corporation. We want to generate new opportunities that anyone can access.

Earlier this year, StellarFi co-hosted its first community-focused financial literacy event with the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority chapter to promote financial literacy for the BlPOC community. In turn, the city of Bridgeport mayor named April 30, the date of the event, Stellar Credit Day in honor of the event.

This event came on the heels of StellarFi’s “Get Your Bills Paid with Stellar!” $10,000 Sweepstakes to help people pay their bills with sweepstakes prizes totaling nearly $70,000.

StellarFi also partners with Stellar Credit Day keynote speaker Stacey Tisdale, who also is a StellarFi founding partner, and Angela Yee on initiatives including sharing financial literacy best practices through their digital finance empowerment program “Wealth Wednesdays.”

I really, really dislike routines. But I recognize the value of having some predictability in the day. So I try to have consistency in my daily activities but reserve the right to be flexible in changing and modifying whatever I’m doing.

Resilience (because it’s a freaking grind). Empathy (because you MUST KNOW thy customer and team). Killer Instinct (because you only eat what you kill).

You must ask yourself if there’s something else that you could do for a living, if the answer is yes, then do yourself a huge favor and pursue that other thing. If the answer is: I absolutely can not do anything else but be an entrepreneur then go for it.

We thought our product was solving a big problem for a small group of people. Instead, we realized we have a mass market solution.

Although it’s a funny mistake now, it was terrifying back then. The funniest mistake I made was at my very first significant investor pitch to Wells Fargo. Investor pitches have a specific format with only so much time allotted and specific points to hit, and at this pitch, there were dozens of investors, high-profile people, and a handful of other startups. I had shared my ideas before and spoken to investors and thought I had my pitch down, so I barely spent any time practicing.

When it was time for my pitch, I stepped up on the stage and blanked. I was so nervous. Every second felt like an eternity because I couldn’t push a word out. Words finally started coming out of my mouth and I’m still not quite sure what I said. I said some things about the business and maybe about the business model. After I finished, I sat down next to one of my co-founders and he said “Well, the silver lining here is no one can steal our idea.”

The takeaway from that experience was no matter how good you think you are, practice is essential. Every new experience is unique and requires practice for success. I felt I was experienced in selling my ideas and public speaking, but since then I’ve learned it’s important to prepare.

I spend time with my family, read, exercise, play and try to carve as much time as possible to think.

I don’t have a role model.

“Failure is a factor of success” is my mantra.

You have to embrace and anticipate it. No matter how experienced you are, there will be failure and you have to manage it, leverage it, then turn it into success.

Fintech provides compelling ideas and technologies to emerge that will alter the state of our ever-changing world. Here’s what to watch for:

Accelerated evolution: Because of COVID-19, remote work was an absolute necessity for over two years, and platforms like Zoom and Slack scaled at absurd rates to keep businesses operational. Tech investments were completely recalibrated, with billions in capital going to the digital economy. The lesson from this is to continue our technological and entrepreneurial evolution to better prepare for the unknown and unpredictable tech evolutions, in fintech specifically.

Decentralized trust: For better or for worse, Americans have disassembled their trust in the mega-entities that once dictated our opinions, decisions and ideologies. But, as with anything else, decentralized trust has a silver lining—especially for fintech. Consumers who once feared using a credit card online are now comfortable depositing checks digitally, using apps to transfer money to friends and family and investing in blockchain. In short, decentralized trust has a ripple effect that leads to consumers accessing loans, investment tools and more through fintech that would otherwise be unavailable.

Mass empowerment: There are swaths of the American populace that don’t understand the power of a good credit score—not because they lack financial literacy, but because they’ve never experienced life without good credit. With inadequate credit, consumers pay more for necessities, lack access to credit-based investments like homeownership and education, and endure financial emergencies with no safety net. Poor credit begets poor credit, and the consequences persist from generation to generation. Although Americans are facing immense challenges in a post-COVID world, it has opened the eyes of many to better understand and adopt financially literate practices.

Inflation is currently at a forty-year high as a recession looms in the near future. Americans don’t have to feel weighed down by a troubled economy and can take straightforward steps to ensure financial stability in the coming months and year:

Get current on your credit card payments 

Falling behind on loans and credit card payments can have serious consequences for your credit. Payment history, which represents your track record for repaying your debts, accounts for 35% of your credit score – more than any other credit rating factor.  Lenders can only report delinquent accounts to the credit bureaus if they’re more than 30 days overdue, but they may charge penalties if you pay even one day late. Coupled with inflation, those late fees can snowball into a serious deficit in your budget. Automating your payments can help if you simply forget due dates. If you find yourself making late payments because you don’t typically have cash in your account when the bill is due, look for areas to reduce expenses temporarily while you get caught up.

2. Build an emergency savings fund

Saving money is challenging, and unfortunately, building a savings fund becomes even more challenging during an economic downturn. Although it’s tough, focusing on stashing some cash away can keep rising prices and financial emergencies from causing long-term damage. For example, if you need to cover an unexpected repair or medical bill, a savings account helps you avoid going into debt to pay the bill or fall behind on your other expenses.

3. Reduce your spending and expenses

The forces driving inflation are complicated, but the effect is simple: as prices rise, life gets more expensive. Take a look at your accounts to see how your spending has shifted in recent months. If you notice vulnerable areas or your spending is no longer aligned with your financial goals or income, look for ways to cut back. You can’t control the price of gas or food, but you can control how often you drive or eat out, or eliminate unused memberships and subscriptions.

Success = freedom to do most daily things not out of necessity but because you want to do them.

Books:

1. What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars, by Brendan Moynihan and Jim Paul

2. Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, by Peter Kropotkin

ANDREW LUONG

Co-Founder & CEO of Doorvest, a modern, frictionless way to own income generating homes entirely online.

90% of the world's millionaires have attributed their wealth to real estate investing, yet homeownership rates have declined to all-time lows. This unfortunate reality is due to the time commitment and friction of the traditional process and the capital barrier due to rising home values, stagnant wages, and mounting student loan debt. Similar to other high-quality assets, everyday investors have been locked out of the #1 most favored investment asset class, real estate. This is why we built Doorvest.

Doorvest is the first end-to-end real estate investment platform with a mission to advance financial security for all via ownership of out-of-state rental properties.

Doorvest lives at the intersection between technology and real estate by providing an all-in-one solution, eliminating the most painful steps for the end customer. We mitigate risk from the customer's perspective by providing extensive renovations to deliver a new home. In addition, we've aligned our pricing with our customers to ensure we're both working towards the same goal: a long-term and successful investment property with a series of guarantees that fosters a stress-free and happy customer.

In traditional real estate investing, the end-to-end timeline is 6 months with at least 26 steps for a customer to comb through. Doorvest does it in 12 steps, half the time. We also emphasize pricing transparency. This means home prices are set to effectively remove the traditional bidding wars and simplify the process overall for old and new homeowners.

In the end, a customer receives a completely renovated home with a first-year rental and maintenance guarantee, an average cash-on-cash return of 6% while still capturing tax and equity advantages that generate passive income from day 1.

Doorvest is an organic embodiment of many of our team's backgrounds. Personally, I grew up middle class. Never truly financially secure, I saw firsthand the downside of financial instability and how it jeopardized my family unit. As I grew up, those memories stuck with me and shaped my path working in sales and partnerships. This led me to real estate investing as an avenue to generate passive income and build a long-term nest egg. I was fortunate enough to build a small portfolio with a small starting capital, and friends around me began to take notice. There was never a singular platform that I could point them towards to make it easier for friends to get started, so Doorvest became the embodiment of that.

The name Doorvest derives from the idea of investors investing in front doors. I do remember a funny story about our name – When I first secured the domain for doorvest.com, someone offered me $500 to buy the domain. At the time, we had no traction and no customers, so I thought this was a funny way to make some extra bucks if the name didn't stick.

Funding varies by round. We've raised close to $18M in equity to date and $25M in debt to fund the real estate part of the business. Most recently, we had our Series A round and that was focused on market expansion and bringing on more awesome team members to support the increased scope of the business. Ultimately, driving growth in the business and growth in new customers/ homeowners.  

In the traditional sense, Justin Kasad is my Co-Founder and CTO of Doorvest. The company, however, went through multiple iterations, and every time was a new founding moment. As such, I see all of the team members as co-founders as they played a pivotal role in those times. Moving forward, I imagine having more founding moments as we track down the road to advancing financial security for all.

This journey - with Doorvest - is the most rewarding thing I've ever attempted in my life. The ability to serve lots and lots of customers and build an excellent work culture that has folks excited to work every day are some of the things I find most rewarding. Seeing our progress so far gives me a lot of optimism for the future ahead. From a challenge standpoint, it depends on the chapter and what's happening worldwide. One of the biggest challenges I dealt with was our 1st round of funding, getting enough cash to get the business off the ground, and it took us 5 months fighting tooth and nail for every dollar. Many times, we didn't think we could get enough cash to get Doorvest off the ground. Recently, one of the most challenging times was ensuring the company is rowing in the same direction, and alignment takes a lot of work.

In short, this made all of our jobs harder. With the lack of supply, there will be more competition and rising home values that compress customer yield, which ultimately leads to fewer homes that attract customers than before. Such conditions pressed us to be more creative in acquiring homes that would guarantee attraction. We have lots of optimism ahead because the real estate market will soften at some point - meaning less competition and allowing us to offer our customers increasingly higher yields and investments. Our team has managed to combat these challenges by carrying out quick and consistent sprints that are sustainable for the long run. 

In 2022 alone, we introduced a home matching algorithm called Doormatch. Doormatch takes customers' investment criteria and automatically matches their preferences to the ideal investment home. We also revamped the path to access Doorvest home profiles and how to easily reserve homes of interest. Most importantly, we expanded into 3 new markets: Atlanta, San Antonio, and recently, Oklahoma City. Be on the lookout for more expansions as we don't plan on stopping anytime soon.

My day starts around 7 in the morning. Get up, meditate, drink some coffee or work out, hit the shower, and get ready for the work day. Work begins around 8:30-9 am and runs until 6:30 pm. Then I log off, grab dinner and rinse and repeat. This schedule varies by day as sometimes I'll do another hour or two in the evenings. But ultimately, my schedule is the same every day for 5 workdays. Fridays and Saturdays are my off days where I intentionally stay away from email and Slack. Initially, I deleted the email app on my phone because I found myself constantly opening emails and scrolling, and there's a mental stimulation that goes on even when I wasn't replying to those emails. On Sundays, I'll work another 2-4 hours to clean up my inbox and give myself a soft start to the week ahead. This routine has given me the right balance to stay energetic, and I believe energy is essential to perform at the highest levels for the long run consistently.

It's essential to have a strong understanding of your purpose and your "why." There are many ups and downs in startup environments, so having a clear Northstar that you are working towards is critical, especially in downtimes. Also, it's vital to ensure that you and your team are resilient and can handle questions like: How do we, as a team/ as a company, withstand outside conditions? How do we ensure we can consistently build despite changing, uncontrollable circumstances? 

It's very, very hard to build a business. There are tactical and psychological learnings, but when outside conditions constantly evolve, and you are working to bring a platform into existence that's never done before, it's inevitably really hard. Many team members would agree. The upside is the magnitude of how rewarding it feels to have brought something to life. 

Tim Ferriss is the first that comes to mind. Tim Ferriss' books have fundamentally shaped how I view life, work, personal finances, and lifestyle design. 

"Your problems never cease, they just change." 

At first glance, the quote sounds morbid with your life having problems consistently. But if you take a step back, challenges/ struggles/ problems are inevitability human life. The disconnect here is people tend to think they live an unhappy life until they get a new shiny car, get a new job, make X amount of money, marry a beautiful spouse, etc., and all of their problems will go away. The reality is as soon as you arrive at those milestones, you will want and face new challenges, and enough will never be enough. The goal is to enjoy the journey vs. the destination. 

We are very optimistic about the future despite turbulent market conditions. As mentioned earlier, we have successfully made progress despite many headwinds within a competitive housing market. As the market softens, it’s Doorvest’s chance to play offense and provide customers with more stability in their investments and income streams. And ultimately, build an increasingly bigger business.  

Success means three things for me: 

Success means driving the most meaningful impact for as many people as possible - how can Doorvest create more homeowners and increase the speed of homeownership? How can we partner with our customers as they build their investment portfolios, go on their financial journey to freedom, enter retirement, and live off these income streams? 

Success is our team. How can Doorvest, as a company, also cultivate an environment where members can feel supported and grow? 

Success is building a meaningful business that drives a solid financial return for all of our stakeholders (as we have quite a few investors in the company, and it was intentionally designed as such). 

Books:

1. 4-Hour Week by Tim Ferriss. Topics mentioned in this book has shaped by life

2. Thinking In Bets by Annie Duke. Annie was a professional poker player, and she talks about the psychology of non-binary decisions. What this means is you can make the wrong decision and have the right outcome or you can make the right decision and make the right outcome. The importance here is being able to determine whether or not the decision made at the time was right or not. 

3. Radical Candor by Kim Scott. This book talks about the importance of feedback loops and how to build trusts and deep relationships. Knowledge here can be taken into the workplace and be utilized in life as well. 

Health & Fitness:

1. Ooler Chilipad. I invested a bit in this product- it’s a heating and cooling topper for my bed. It uses heat to help put you to sleep and cools down to bring your body temperature to an ideal temperature for an optimal sleep quality. Then it uses heat again to wake you up in the morning.

2. WHOOP. It tracks my sleep and daily HRV (heart rate variability), particularly what stress does to my HRV over time. It’s really interesting to learn what inputs led to these outputs. For example, don’t drink before you go to bed because they’ll mess up your recover and sleep quality. 

3. Barry's Bootcamp. I do it once a week. It’s fun to do a high intensity interval training, especially when doing with our group at work.

Products:

1. Top of mind is Athletic Greens. I don’t usually like to eat a lot of vegetables so this is a great way to check off my daily vitamins and greens intake. 

Newsletters & Podcasts:

1. The Tim Ferriss Show

2. The All-In Podcast (covers everything from politics to economy, startups to venture, etc.)

Upcoming Vacation Spots:

1. Up next, I would like to go back to Vietnam. I’ve been there before but it would be great to return with my girlfriend as both of our parents are from there. It’ll be really exciting to have this immersive experience together. 

2. Perhaps sometime next year, I would like to visit Italy. There’s something about the country that feels so idyllic. Renting a convertible and driving the Southern Coast, or renting a boat and enjoy a beautiful day on the lake. 

MONISH SABNANI

Co-Founder of Courant, a company that creates beautiful tech accessories that seamlessly integrate into your home and surrounding life.

Courant is a design-forward electronics brand with a focus on wireless charging. We create beautiful phone charging accessories that seamlessly integrate into your home and surrounding life. Each product form is designed to be effortless in use and aesthetically pleasing.

We launched in 2018 and have 3 core product forms: CATCH:1, a single-device charger; CATCH:2, a multi-device charger; and CATCH:3, a valet tray charger. We’ve also created two unique collections of materials: our “Classics” collection which features Italian leather and high-grade aluminum, and our “Essentials” collection, which comes with Belgian linen and soft-touch plastic.

Our goal is to power your life and the devices you use most.

Evan (Co-founder) & I met back in 2017 at a consumer goods platform & incubator called “Very Great”. This was an interesting time because the 2 founders of Very Great were looking to expand their portfolio of brands. Together we all got excited about the electronics category, and in particular the trend of wireless phone charging which was starting to emerge across Apple and Samsung products. At the time the technology was incredibly exciting, but there were no brands or really any products that spoke to today’s modern, digitally savvy consumer. The existing marketplace of products were made of plastic, didn’t have a color story, and really no brand appeal whatsoever. At the end of 2017, we began researching opportunities and discovered a wide-open landscape in the wireless charging category to launch Courant into.

We launched Courant’s first two products (CATCH:1 and CATCH:3) in August 2018 at the NY Now tradeshow and have since grown into an eight-figure business. A few weeks after the launch we were prominently featured in Oprah’s “Favorite Things” and Gwenyth Paltrow’s “Goop” holiday gift guides, which really gave us an opportunity to shine on a national level. From there we started building the business, brick by brick. Today, Courant’s products are widely distributed online and in-store at retailers such as West Elm, CB2, Design Within Reach, Best Buy, Bed Bath Beyond, Container Store and more. It’s been an exciting journey!

I was raised in Hong Kong with a background in Chinese manufacturing, which my family has been involved in for over thirty years. Evan’s expertise is largely in brand operations for consumer product companies. He calls me the left brain and him the right brain. I mainly oversee our e-comm, marketing & brand, product development and finance. He focuses mostly on sales, international operations, warehousing and legal. By having diversified backgrounds and skill sets we’re able to balance each other out and supplement each other in a way that makes our business stronger. 

The name Courant comes from ‘Au Courant’, a French saying that means “in the know” or “up to speed on current trends”—or literally ‘current’—which is both a reference to an object being relevant to the times as well as an electrical current. We wanted something literal, but not clunky or ‘techy’.

The last few years have truly been so interesting from a macro perspective. COVID in particular was something that we could have never prepared for, especially this early in our career. It came with a multitude of challenges: supply chain disruptions, chip shortages, freight price volatility, labor shortages in the US, and the list goes on…It was (and still is) a steep learning curve on both a professional and personal level. It’s funny, we started off with a mission to create a unique electronics brand, and today we are crisis-level experts on supply chain. I’ve learned all kinds of things that I never expected to. That really is the beauty of the experience. On the flip side, the challenges are taking in all this new information and dealing with it in-real time, at a high-stakes level.

We design all of our products in-house, drawing inspiration from interior design concepts and materials used for home accessories like side tables, couches and lamps. We look at everything we do, whether it’s product design, web design, and photo/video styling as an opportunity to stand outside of the traditional ‘consumer electronics’ industry aesthetic. Courant’s design DNA, at its core, is the intersection of technology, interior-design, fashion and “culture”, which we define as modern trends and social movements.

Principal to our product design and development is material selection. We’ve created a layered supply-chain that involves producing materials from both Italy and Belgium, which then get shipped and assembled in China. Our linen supplier is 100% carbon neutral and uses solar power as the primary driver to their facility. Our leather supplier is “Gold-rated”, which is a standard tracking energy and water consumption, as well as worker safety. It’s all very modern and adds extra layers of complexity (and cost), but it is key to what we’re doing. Most tech companies at our scale build products with cheap components, leaving consumers with products that quickly become physically and aesthetically obsolete. We have honed in on aspects such as design, but combine them with modern manufacturing to create products that we ourselves are comfortable with and want to use.

We’re launching our first few magnetic chargers later this summer. The magnetic chargers are very exciting for us as it’s our first foray into a new user experience to pair with Apple’s MagSafe phones (iPhone 12 onwards). We believe this will be the new charging standard for several years and have spent almost 2 years developing our magnetic collection. 

COVID-19 brought on widespread supply chain lock downs and disruption, which meant that we needed to be as flexible and agile as possible in order to survive. The chip shortage of 2020-21 in particular was a big issue for us. We were presented the situation back in March of 2021, which was that our core chip component lead time was going from 1 month to 6 months. We moved quickly to purchase a year's worth of chips upfront and hold stock. As I reflect on that time, we were fortunate to have the advantage of being a small team, which allowed us to make decisions quickly, rather than having to deal with the time-consuming process of a larger corporate hierarchy structure. We also had the financial support of the wider Very Great platform which enabled us to make swift and bold business moves, which might have been too risky otherwise. It’s moments like that which allowed us to sustain and grow our business despite the challenges that COVID-19 threw our way.

We’re both fully remote, which is something we’ve both come to love over time. The mornings and afternoons are typically pretty heavy on calls, i.e. touchbases with the team, working sessions, talking to different vendors and partners. It’s usually in the evening when we both get some down time to work in silence and put our heads down to focus on bigger picture planning. I love the night session - it really is the most productive time for me.

Tips? Honestly, something we’ve come to lean into is that the standard “9-6” work life at a desk is completely over. Everyone has a unique life filled with different responsibilities and priorities. We empower each other and our team to integrate work and life so that they can thrive off of flexibility, not restriction. If you have to make an appointment at 2pm on Monday, please do. We’re both integrating our life and work into one lifestyle, 7 days a week. There is no pressure to be “online” all day. This is a huge unlock and allows us to work on our personal life as much as our professional life.

Perseverance - the road ahead is tough and not for the faint hearted. The #1 thing I’ve learned is to put your head down and push through. The hard work that most people avoid is often the beauty of the job.

Equanimity - Don’t get too high during the highs, and don’t get too low during the lows. Find a cool, calm middle ground and operate in that bubble.

Read, a lot - to quote Charlie Munger: “In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn't read all the time -- none, zero. You'd be amazed at how much Warren reads--and at how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think I'm a book with a couple of legs sticking out.” There is no better way to absorb information than reading.

Getting direct personal feedback on my communication skills both professionally and personally has really helped me grow. Sometimes we don’t want to hear our truth because it is uncomfortable and hurtful. But when you can actively take feedback and grow from your peers I think that is a huge advantage. There is so much to learn about communication skills. I also try to give feedback to the people I care about.

Tim Cook - 1) because Apple is my favorite company of all time and has been since I was a teenager, and 2) because I’d love to personally introduce him to what we’re doing over at Courant.

I would have to share two: Barack Obama, for his grace, and Kobe Bryant, for his work ethic. Both are (were) also incredible parents to their kids, which I have the utmost respect for when you have had the careers that they did.

I love to go for long walks with a podcast in-ear, play basketball, surf in the summers and read as much as possible. What I read: autobiographies (if you have a cool story I want to know about it), and a lot of newsletters, blogs and Twitter threads. I also have a particular interest in web3/blockchain and find everything being built in that space incredibly fascinating. One of my best friends is a partner at Andreesen Horowitz and I’m constantly bugging him with questions. 

“The journey is the reward” - Steve Jobs

We often work so hard towards an end goal and wind up missing everything in between. I really believe that life is not about the big moments, but all the little, unforgettable moments. If you can celebrate the small wins and appreciate the most mundane of tasks I think you’ll find the ultimate happiness. 

There’s obviously a lot going on right now between inflation, US & China relations, and the crisis in Ukraine. Fundamentally we are the type of people to play the long game. While it’s easy to get frantic over the day-to-day news cycle, we’re very bullish on the future of everything. If that core belief ever changed I would radically change what I was doing on a daily basis. I probably would not be in business. 

Success = flexibility. All too often we want to do things but are restricted. I’ll know I’m successful when I have the ultimate decision making ability to do most things (within reason), whether that be personally or professionally.

Books:

1. No Rules Rules- Reed Hastings (CEO of Netflix) on how to build an innovative, disruptive corporate culture

2. Dreams From My Father - Barack Obama’s origin story, written pre politics

3. Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike- Phil Knight’s founding story of Nike. A must read for all entrepreneurs

Health & Fitness:

1. Steps, every day. I aim for 8-10K

2. Strength training - I try to get 2 full body workouts in a week

3. Basketball - Pickup in Brooklyn, as much as I can

Brands:

1. Lululemon pants have totally replaced jeans in my life. I wear them everyday

2. Stance long compression stocks 

3. Hoodies, all the time

Products:

1. AirPods Pro

2. Lululemon Black Pants

3. Trader Joes Milk Chocolate Pretzels (!)

Newsletters & Podcasts:

1. Leanluxe & 2PM (Ecomm newsletters)

2. All-In Podcast (General macro news & investing)

3. How I Built This (Founder-driven, entrepreneurial storytelling podcast)

Upcoming Vacation Spots:

1. Hawaii surf trip

2. Tel Aviv

3. Buenos Aires

4. Cape Town

Brandon Schulz

Founder of Violet, a Commerce API Platform enabling any app to integrate universal checkout in weeks instead of years.

Violet is a unified API that allows any online channel (be it an app, a website, a game, or live stream) to connect to a brand or retailer's ecommerce backend without the need for expensive and complex integrations. We call it a “unified API” because our mission is to provide integration with any e-commerce platform through a single, unified API. So whether you’re an online influencer looking to get more purchases directly through your platform, or you’re a brand who wants to sell through more channels, all you’ll need is this API. It’s great for shoppers too because they can purchase from anywhere on the internet, with no clickout. 

Right now we’ve built integrations into leading e-commerce platforms, and are working with a wide range of customers who are creating new and exciting online experiences: influencer platforms, publishers, online shopping marketplaces. 

While Rhen and I started Violet in 2017, I’ve more or less been trying to solve the same problem for over a decade. The question driving my career has always been the same: how can we create a more open, distributed, and collaborative version of e-commerce? Specifically, what would it take for shoppers to be able to buy products directly inside social, livestream, SMS, voice, AR, VR, or any other experience developers and app companies decide to build? I happen to think the answer is Violet, but it took a while to get there.

In 2012, I co-founded a company that was basically a Hootsuite but for e-commerce products. I learned a lot on the job through that project, about how to fundraise, build a good team, talk to investors. That’s also where I first met Rhen Zabel, our Co-Founder and CTO, and Tyler Middleton, our Head of Growth. But e-commerce wasn’t mature enough for something like Violet to work.

After that, I worked for a few other larger companies in retail, and really grew as a manager and a leader. But I never stopped thinking about how to solve the problem of distributed e-commerce. Rhen was in a similar position, tackling related issues for larger companies. At each step of the way, we realized no one was solving the infrastructure layer. Eventually we just realized we had to build it ourselves once and for all and offer it as a platform.

The concept is a little science-y, but it’s based on the color spectrum: violet is the last visible color of light that we can see with the human eye. There are a bunch of different kinds of light waves beyond that, some of which we can see under an ultraviolet light, but violet is the last color you see and touch before you reach a realm of rather magical and unbelievable possibilities.

That’s exactly how our product works: we’re the last interface or infrastructure you see when conducting e-commerce at the edge: and what you see is very simple, elegant and intuitive. But what’s behind that, the backend and coordination and artistry that’s making this very simple, intuitive purchase experience possible remains invisible. You can feel it’s impact in how your purchase experience (or merchant or channel experience) improves, but what you see and interact with is Violet.

My Co-Founder is Rhen Zabel, an amazing engineer and innovator who I’ve known for over a decade now. Rhen and I actually share a birthday down to the year (same exact xx/xx/xxxx), which from the beginning felt like a very auspicious sign for how well we’d work together. I love working with Rhen for so many reasons: he’s a brilliant problem solver, and has been coding since he was 12 or 13. So it’s like getting a 20-year engineer still early in his career. He’s also just a very thoughtful person, very passionate about the environment, obsessed with sci-fi. So working with him on one level is easy just because I like him so much as a person.

As a colleague, he brings a lot to the table that compliments what I can do: our product already skews technical, but Rhen is the engineering genius behind our product. He’s incredibly discerning with his words, and has predilections to a certain type of intelligence and long-term focus that are really rare. He keeps me grounded, and is the one ensuring that we’re actually building the product I’m imagining. I often like to say that I’m driving the train, but Rhen’s the one laying the track.

Favorites:

Working with Rhen Zabel: Rhen and I have known each other for over ten years now. It’s so gratifying to build something you believe in with someone who is equally passionate and exceedingly skilled. 

Acquiring new skills at a 10x pace: You can’t not learn rapidly when you’re building your own company. It’s been 4+ years of this and it’s been really fun and invaluable in my own development. I also think that kind of learning is helping our team stay engaged.

Building teams: There’s nothing more exciting than finding people who share in your vision but bring something new to the table. It’s been the best part of the new year by far. 

Making it real: Seeing an idea that I wrote on a whiteboard in middle of 2017 finally come to fruition 4 years later…it’s my ultimate definition of success.

Seeing customers use the API and grow their businesses on it: We’ve had so many meetings with customers where they say something to the effect of “This is the exact solution I’ve been looking for. This can’t be real…” Which is exactly what we love to hear! That’s incredibly affirming and motivating as we keep having more of those conversations, and ultimately seeing our customers succeed. 

The amazing people that I’ve gotten to meet along the way: Fellow founders, investors, new teammates.

The boost from fantastic VCs: Feels so great to meet people who believe in you who are willing to invest in your idea, your dream.

Least-Liked

Being at the mercy of timing: Building something very close to my dream product 4 years ahead of time meant a long wait and long slog to build with Rhen. 

Doubt: The years of people not believing in us, resulting in self-doubt and lonely nights.

The drag from bad VCs: Being misunderstood or underestimated for what we were capable of as a team and a product.

Uphill climb: Our product comes out of a really deep understanding and love for the behind the scenes of e-commerce. We had to lay the groundwork over and over again to explain our product, as the market and understanding of the landscape took years to catch up to where we already were.

Funding was really terrible, until it wasn’t. We really wanted to raise from a VC firm in Seattle, where we’re from. But we didn’t take into account geographical priors and general market structure in Seattle when we set out to do that. So we got no’s from nearly every VC in Seattle. But that work just meeting with everyone eventually paid off, and once we started meeting with the right people it turned around very quickly. After we met the team at RSV (Red Sea Ventures) we then got introduced to Brian Sugar, who introduced us to Lachy Groom. And it just snowballed really beautifully from there to where we had about 45 VCs all showing a high amount of interest, to the point where our seed round was oversubscribed by about $2M. We narrowed it down to the right team, and just 90 days later Klarna made a big strategic investment to speed our growth and lead our Series A.

Since then, we’ve been focused on updating and accelerating our growth strategy quite a bit. Most of our investment now has gone towards automating processes to save time, and building a world class team. Of course there are still features and improvements we’re making to our product all the time, but right now it’s about how we can scale the excellent API we’ve worked hard to build, and reaching all the communities of potential customers we know are out there.

Despite the learning curve with hiring, the growth has been phenomenal. It’s been such an exciting year for us. What’s really fun for us is every launch of our product is really someone else’s launch: we get to watch all kinds of online channels and experiences kick off something new in their business. We have one client in particular in stealth right now that we’ve just loved getting to work with. If you come back to us in Q2 we can share some more info there.

But really we’re seeing the reality we envisioned come to life, which is new ways for people to purchase at the edge, with more and more startups expanding into live and curated shopping in lots of new and interesting ways.

Many people will tell you that recruiting is the hardest thing you’ll do when you’re starting out. And it’s even harder than they say it is.

I think for some new companies recruiting is hard because of sourcing and closing. We’re fortunate not to have that problem: we find people easily and once they’re in the funnel they’re usually excited to join.

BUT, recruiting does put a huge crunch on our bandwidth. In many ways it’s much harder to go from four to 40 people than it is to go from 40 to 400. I’d tell anyone just starting out that the moment you need to hire more than 15 people, hire a recruiter. I wish someone had said that to me, it would’ve saved a lot of headaches.

COVID has had a huge impact on our business. As most people know just from surviving lockdowns, e-commerce was an industry that did very well in the pandemic. It definitively proved its utility, convenience, and potential. Every company and merchant was forced to prioritize e-commerce, basically compressing what might have been a decade of changes to infrastructure and business models in just 12 months. So what we have now is really the landscape Violet was made to serve, where you have old systems, new systems, incumbents, start-ups all trying to figure out how to sell products in this new marketing landscape. In a marketplace of millions of vendors, how do you get traction? Targeted, direct-to-consumer advertising can only get you so far, especially as regulations are changing to protect privacy. So that’s where our tool becomes vital circuitry in the new distributed model of e-commerce. As we’ve hit our stride with funding, finding customers, and growing our team, it’s proving to be a really exciting moment to be in e-commerce.

E-commerce has changed significantly during and post-COVID, if we can say that at this point. While we stayed at home, everyone hopped on their computer and bought everything online. We felt this in the out-of-stock notices on websites. We felt this in the three months I waited to get the couch that I purchased. We felt this in the dramatic increase in prices corporations were able to leverage due to the product shortage.

Before the pandemic, e-commerce was still only about 15% of all retail purchases globally. That number increased dramatically, resulting in an acceleration of e-commerce penetration by anywhere from six to ten years. This means that reliance on e-commerce has increased more rapidly than anyone had expected. As a result, the pressure on the underlying infrastructure of e-commerce has increased, revealing the gaps in the ecosystem broadly, as well as in the individual platforms themselves.

I’m a big believer that we are the things we do repetitively, and don’t really buy into “tricks” for productivity. Instead, I just keep my life very goal-focused, almost treating my own output like I would a product with OKRs: What do I want to accomplish? By when? How can I measure success, and how can I fit those measurements and goals to reasonable time horizons? That may feel a bit on the nose, but it’s how I stay on task.

If I were to recommend a productivity hack, I think it’d be self-compassion. We think of high performers as being hard on themselves, but usually the very best athletes and musicians hold themselves to high standards by default, and the hard work is in understanding how to be kind to themselves and others.

All that said, in addition to work every day I make sure to focus on my mornings:

Wake before 6am

Peloton for 30 min

Stretch for 30 min

Meditate for 20 Min

Journal for 20 Min

These daily routines keep me grounded, energized, and focused on what really matters. 

I don’t think it’s as much about what qualities you have as it is about how you approach being an entrepreneur. So many entrepreneurs today just want to immediately go out there and start a company for the sake of starting a company. I don’t recommend this. Instead, I recommend new entrepreneurs go work somewhere else first, and find the problem they’re most passionate about at that company. Too many people just start things without first understanding their space inside and out. But if you start with the problem you really care about, and learn as much as you can about that problem, you’ll know the biggest pain points for your potential customers and build by far the most compelling companies. This only happens when you’re solving real, concrete problems for people and businesses.

Today, I think the business ventures that will be the most successful will either be very niche, or combinatorial. What I mean by that is, if you look at a company like Figma, they’re solving a very specific problem, and they do it incredibly well. They’re a niche product but with wide adoption in that niche because they really understand their customer. At Violet, we’re kind of the opposite: we’re a combination of e-commerce, plus headless, plus product distribution. We’re this amalgam of other product types that have been around before, but never in this combination. In fact it was the combining of these different features that was such a technical challenge and what makes us so valuable to our customers.

We’re past the days of someone simply standing up a website and making money. The barrier to value is much higher now, and that’s where I’ve seen the best founders today accelerate past others, because they know a particular use case so well, or are able to combine things in a novel way to generate new value.

At the age of 16 I broke my leg twice in two years, and spent three months in a wheelchair. While there were a lot of learning experiences from that, I distinctly remember one incident where I was waiting to use the restroom. The two normal stalls were empty, but the person had chosen the wheelchair accessible stall. I had to wait until they were finished. At first I was furious, and then realized that I had done this very same thing without thinking about it prior to my injury. I was frustrated after three months in a wheelchair for how that experience was overlooked by others: it was eye-opening to think about what it must be like to live a lifetime in different and sometimes more challenging circumstances.

While some things can’t be fully understood until you experience them, one can’t experience everything, and this gap is something I now think about often: How can I constantly strive to empathize with the experiences and challenges of other people, even when I can’t directly experience it myself? One of our core values at Violet is empathy, because we ultimately work better together and build better companies by being able to consider other peoples’ viewpoints. Sure, we can’t always completely understand the experiences of those around us–but that’s precisely why we always try.

Without hesitation, Barack Obama. Regardless of your politics, I feel it’s like living during the time of Abraham Lincoln and not wanting to at least sit down with them. The version of the world Barack Obama stepped into, the problems he’s faced as an individual and a leader, are in combination unprecedented. And so there are just insights, experiences, and wisdom from that that I couldn’t get from anyone else. I’d need at least an hour to talk to him about his career and life’s work.

I take a lot of inspiration from Philippe Petit, the man who walked a tightrope between the original World Trade towers. He was so focused on his craft and passionate about the process just as much about the outcome. He woke up everyday and ‘got on his wire’, whether it was 2 feet off the ground, or 2,000 feet off the ground. His attention to detail allowed him to perform an act for which the consequence of a single mistake was death. We very rarely engage in activities when a single mistake is certain death. If Philippe has made a misstep above the World Trade Towers, there’s no surviving that fall. While I don’t want to be punished with death for each mistake I make doing the thing I love, I find the clarity to be beautiful in my own relationship to my craft. I highly recommend Man on Wire, watched through the lens of a metaphor and as performance art. 

I really like cycling, I read a lot of nonfiction, and I try to make a point of keeping up with all the Oscar-nominated films on an annual basis. But honestly, I love to learn new things and more often than not I’m applying that energy to my work. It doesn’t feel like work for me though. For me, it’s fun to spend a few hours on a weekend getting really proficient at a new tool that could help our company, because a) I’m learning something new and b) I’m working towards something I’m endlessly passionate about.

I’ve often thought it’s strange that we don’t make the same kinds of boundaries for hyper focused, dedicated artists and high performers like we do for other vocations. Like, no one would ever criticize John Mayer or Prince for playing guitar too much in their off hours, or Sue Bird for practicing on her evenings or weekends. For me, this is my craft, this is my sport. I’ve pursued other passions like music but now this is my focus, it’s what I love to do. While, I like to read and get outside like many people, I spend a great deal of my time just trying to get better at the thing I love. 

“Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

– Rainer Maria Rilke

I stand with Ukraine.

Doing what you set out to do.

Books:

1. The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt . This book changed my mind about whether people can change their minds. We are less rational than we think we are. And this book presents the foundation for this based on Moral Psychology. At the root of moral psychology is the way by which any one of us decides to do or not do something regardless of explicit rules. I found this book to be enlightening in understanding my own brain, as well as the way others come to make decisions and behave in our ever increasingly complex world.

2. Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown. I love this book. It is a gorgeous metaphor of the magic that happens when a team locks in. It’s about a rowing crew from the University of Washington (roughly 30 min from where I live). There’s a concept in rowing called ‘swing’ that almost feels like flying over the water. It happens when everyone is pulling in the same direction, completely in sync, as a result of a kind of unification that arises out of the body of a hull with 8 individual humans catapulting forward. I want to feel this in the teams I build. The book talks through the ups and downs of the coach, the individuals, the team, and how we bring all of who we are into our boats every day. 

3. Self-Compassion by Krista Neff. Self-Compassion is about what you might expect, compassion towards oneself. It’s not a soft or wishy washy book, but one that challenges the kinds of toxic cultures we’ve inherited that we likely don’t even know are running through our brains. A lot of this book was about slowing down some of the connections my brain was making that I wasn’t even aware of. Our synapses fire so fast, and the grooves are so strong, that we rarely have the language and practices to stare at them, and evaluate whether the appropriate level of intelligence and wisdom has been integrated into the way we perceived something, how we talk to ourselves, or whether our assumptions about a situation or our performance are accurate or fair at all. 

Health & Fitness:

1. Peloton. Love my Peloton, as I love cycling. My standard approach is to use ‘Just Ride’ and listen to a podcast or book while riding to a particular cadence or output I’m wanting to work on over a period of time.

2. 12 min body weight circuit heavy on strict pull ups (Cross Fit-inspired, WOD style). I try to focus on pull ups as the core exercise involving a lot of different muscles at once, with other movements wrapped in. With our bodies, we have to use it or lose it!

3. Mud WTR. Healthy mushrooms and a bit of caffeine have been more sustainable for me.

Brands:

1. Apple: Of course.

2. Rapha: I have more Rapha gear than any one human being should own.

3. NIKE: Pretty much everything else.

Products:

1. Airpods Max

2. Smart Sweets

3. Ollipop

Newsletters & Podcasts:

1. The Ezra Klein Show. Especially love Ezra’s deep dives into productivity, attention, and parenting. 

2. Hidden Brain. Fascinated by behavioral economics.

3. Masters of Scale. Yep.

Upcoming Vacation Spots:

1. London (my favorite city)

2. Montana (for some summer fly fishing with my partner’s family)

3. Krabi, Thailand (favorite beach)

PETER MARLER

Co-Founder & CEO of Robin Golf, a company that makes buying premium golf clubs easier and more approachable so that more people can start swinging.

We're a family business (female & LGBT founded) that's passionate about bringing accessibility and diversity to golf.  We make the highest quality sets of clubs on the market for new and casual players  - women, men, and juniors.  Very simple purchase process, no jargon, no confusion. 

Most people assume that since I started a golf company that I’m an avid or highly skilled golfer, Neither is true and that’s a big part of the reason Robin was started.  

I co-founded the company with my brother Andrew (a former D1 collegiate player), and my sister-in-law Ali (a new/casual player).  They joined me in Los Angeles in 2017 and in short order  Andrew invited us to play golf with him at his new golf club.   At the time I was using a garage sale set and Ali was using an entry level discount set, neither of which felt appropriate for our debut at the club.  

Ali and I went to a major golf retailer in LA to buy new sets and both had terrible experiences for different reasons.  For me, I was overwhelmed by choice, price, and jargon.  The pro was asking me things like “what loft do you want in your driver” and “what flex to you prefer in the shaft,” which I didn’t know the answers to.  In the end, the set he put together for me came to about $3,500. He then brings Ali into the back of the store and shows her one set of pink clubs and one set of purple clubs.  We both left the store frustrated - me feeling taken advantage of and Ali feeling patronized.  

We asked Andrew what the Warby Parker equivalent of golf was and he told us it didn’t exist.  In confirming this, we found that the major golf brands cater predominantly to avid, skill biased golfers, who overwhelmingly tend to be affluent, white, men.  Meanwhile, the fastest growing groups in the sport were ones that were typically left out of the narrative - women, people of color, juniors, and millennials/gen z.  

That’s when the idea for Robin Golf came about.  Robin was started with the goal of creating accessibility, diversity, and inclusion in golf.  We launched by releasing a line of golf sets, but we see that mission applying to many different categories in golf and beyond.

We had originally named the company Marler Golf, but since our mission was to democratize golf it felt a bit pretentious to name it after ourselves.  Also we had several foreign friends tell us that our last name is difficult to understand/pronounce if English is your second language.  

So we renamed the company Robin which signifies a few things.   First, the bird symbolizes the coming of spring and a sign of good things to come.  Second, Robin fits in nicely with the bird vernacular of golf (e.g. birdie, eagle, albatross, condor).  

I’ve had many favorite parts of the journey, but I’ve enjoyed ideating and creating Robin’s culture the most.  It’s been fun and rewarding to think about commonly held practices in American work culture and asking “is there a good reason to keep doing it this way?”  For example, we implemented a 4-day work week after being inspired by the Icelandic study on its benefits.  I get really energized when I get to think about how we can use Robin as a tool to create positive experiences for our employees, customers, and community.  

My least favorite part is the admin work that comes along with having a small team.  Things like accounting, expenses, taxes, and other paperwork.  Hopefully I won’t have to spend so much time doing those things in the not so distant future.  

I co-founded the company with my brother and my sister-in-law.  Thankfully we’re really close and we all have complementary skills so it’s worked out nicely.  That being said, we have invested in an executive coach so that we can more effectively navigate our work lives and personal lives intertwining.  There have been times where work disputes spill over into our personal lives and it’s never fun when that happens.  

Fundraising has been a trip. Surprisingly, it was way easier for us to raise money when we were just a pitch deck and an idea than it has been after launching and finding success in our first 18 months. I think when you’re pre-launch investors get excited about the possibility of what you will build, whereas after launch the focus is on KPI’s which vary greatly by investor. We’ve raised money from angels and family offices thus far, but we’re in the process of raising our seed round which looks like it may contain our first institutional check.

We got somewhat lucky in that golf exploded during the pandemic. When golf courses opened up around May 2020 our products just started flying off the shelves, which continued through 2021. We 5x’d our top line 20-21 and expect to do the same in 2022 (assuming no more significant supply chain disruptions).

We’re launching several new products this year including a 13-club set, balls, and accessories. Our goal is still to keep our product selection highly curated and simple to understand.

Ultimately our goal is to bring accessibility and inclusivity to a sport that has historically lacked those values. We have a larger vision with regard to that mission that could extend beyond golf in the future.

We launched the week of the shut down and thought we were completely screwed. Thankfully golf was one of the only things that you could do while safely socially distanced so the sport exploded in 2020-2021.

Similar to many ecommerce companies though we were affected by the supply chain issues. Lead times have ballooned and it’s always frustrating to see our container ships idling at the port of LA for weeks at a time. I’d like to think that the situation is improving but I haven’t seen any evidence of that yet unfortunately.

I hate working out in the morning so the only thing I do other than shower and brush my teeth is stretch. Apparently I’m at that age where my lower back hurts all the time and I never was very good about stretching until it became absolutely necessary.

As for staying productive through the day I’m a big fan of taking many small breaks. I’ll usually take a walk, read a few pages of my book, listen to a podcast segment, or get sucked into Tik Tok (I’m desperately trying to reduce my Tik Tok time in 2022).

I try to workout in the evening, but I’ve definitely become less regimented about it during the pandemic. I love cooking so I’ll typically try to cook for myself and my husband rather than ordering from Postmates.

I almost always end the day with a dry martini.

Tenacity - I was listening to the How I Built This interview with Brian Armstrong from Coinbase and he said that someone once told him that entrepreneurship is moving from one setback to another with enthusiasm.  That made me laugh and really resonated with my journey so far.  

The ability to zoom out - sometimes I get so wrapped up in the challenges I’m facing at work that I forget to take a step back and remember that they’re rarely as catastrophic as I’m making them.  In those moments I remind myself that I have my health, wonderful family and friends, food, and shelter, so it’s not going to kill me if someone doesn’t get their golf clubs on time.  That practice is harder than it sounds, but I do my best. 

Self-kindness - I think starting a company humbles you really quickly because it shows you just how little you actually know.  Many people ask if going to business school was a prerequisite to starting a company and I think it helps about 5%, but really the crux of building a business seems to be having strong convictions about the problem you’re solving followed by a ton of trial and error.  I tend to be very self-critical, but I’m learning to cut myself some slack and practice more self-kindness.  I’ve embraced the famous Thomas Edison quote - “I have not failed. I've just found ten thousand ways that won't work.”

In a job I had prior to starting Robin, for the first year I was convinced that I was going to get fired. Not for any specific reason, I just felt very underqualified for the role and my imposter syndrome was severe. I spent the better part of that year complaining to my dad about how I just knew I was going to let go. He was such a good sport about it - he spent about 11 months saying all the right things to make me feel better.

One day after work I called him with this same sob story and I think he had had enough of my whining. Instead of replying with the usual “I’m sure that’s not true etc.” he just says “Oh for f’s sake Peter, SO WHAT?” The reply caught me off guard at first, but then he continued: “So what if you get fired? You’re a highly educated white male with no kids. You might have to update your resume and find a new job. And if we assume the absolute worst case scenario: you lose your job, can’t get a new one, your husband leaves you, and you get thrown out of your house, you can always come back home and annoy us in person until you figure your life out. This is not a real problem, so STOP complaining about it.”

He was absolutely right of course. It was the best reality check I’d ever gotten and I think about him saying that every time I encounter a problem that I think is insurmountable.

I’m going to cheat and say two - Julie Andrews and John Cleese.  They’re iconic and their movies and TV shows have brought me so much joy throughout my life.  

Play tennis, pickleball (which I’ve recently become obsessed with), and golf (badly). 

I love to cook and make cocktails so I try to do those as frequently as possible. 

I’m a big movie guy so I watch as many as I can in my spare time (especially horror movies) 

Reading and board games. 

I’ve been thinking about this question a lot lately, because to me entrepreneurship feels like a series of failures punctuated by brief moments of feeling like you may have done something right.  

To me success is effortlessly acknowledging and feeling joy each day.  I think the things that we think will bring us joy are often misleading, or at least that was my takeaway from the movie Blank Check.

The times in my life where I’ve felt the most joy are ones in which I felt confident in my life’s purpose and supported and loved by those around me.   

Alternatively, I once heard Tom Ford say that success is being able to take a nap after breakfast, so maybe I just shoot for that.  

Books:

1. Delivering Happiness - Tony Hsieh

2. Let My People Go Surfing - Yvon Chouinard

3. Kane and Abel - Jeffrey Archer

Health & Fitness:

1. Shred App

2. Peloton (I don’t cycle, but I like their fitness classes)

3. Kos Vegan Protein

Brands:

1. Allbirds

2. Buck Mason 

3. Eberjey (just got their PJ’s for Christmas and I never want to take them off)

Products:

1. Hendrick’s Gin

2. Cardon SPF face moisturizer

3. Noise cancelling Airpods

Newsletters & Podcasts:

1. Lean Luxe newsletter

2. How I built This podcast

3. Unexplainable podcast

Upcoming Vacation Spots:

1. Patagonia

2. Portugal

3. Turkey

JOE PARENTEAU

Co-Founder & CEO of Fable, a lifestyle brand designing and delivering products that transform how you eat at home—starting with better tableware.

At Fable, we create timeless everyday pieces that inspire and elevate the experience of dining at home. Motivated by a common vision to create products that are as enjoyable as they are ethical, we started with ceramics that are sustainably crafted in Portugal, and have since expanded to flatware, glassware, textiles, and more. Starting with tableware, our mission is to bring ethical, sustainable home decor into every area of the home.

Through transparent pricing and conscious sourcing, we produce accessibly priced tableware without compromising on quality or ethical craftsmanship. We also recognize that a meal is not a given right; in our pursuit of balancing profit and purpose, we donate a meal for every Dinnerware Set sold through our partnership with Mealshare. We plan to continue to grow Fable into a lifestyle brand and trusted source for all things home decor.

I’m a technology leader, and an operations expert. After working in the traditional accounting space, I began my pursuit in technology at Bench Accounting, where I helped build teams and scale the operations from 400 to 4000 clients. Previously, I built and led an 80 person operations team at AvenueHQ, a real estate marketing company.

Together with Max Tims and Tina Luu, I founded Fable as a solution to a personal problem. When wanting to upgrade to more premium home decor and tableware, I wasn’t able to find anything out there that was ethically and sustainably produced and accessibly priced that also offered a simplified shopping experience. We saw an opportunity, and set out to fill the gap.

A favorite for me has been working with such a great team—it’s so inspiring to collaborate with such an incredible group of people. As for the least-liked, I’d say the challenges we’ve faced in recent months due to global shipping delays. Most of our products are produced in places like Portugal and Japan, so naturally, we’ve been pretty heavily impacted by delays. Not being able to replenish our inventory levels at the expected rate, and feeling like we’re letting our customers and community down as a result, hasn’t been easy.

Fable was co-founded together with Max Tims, our Head of Operations, and Tina Luu, our Head of Technology. While our primary roles are quite different, we work very closely to lead Fable under one of our core philosophies: sharing all that we can. All three of us come from a background in tech, and each bring a unique yet complementary skillset to the table. 

Our name is a reference to Aesop’s Fables. More specifically, we were drawn to the fable called The Dove and the Ant, which is what inspired the turtle dove in our logo. Its moral, the importance of showing kindness to others in order to see it in return, was something we felt aligned with both as individuals and as a brand.

The fundraising process has been great so far—our investors have been so helpful and supportive of our business. Whenever we’ve experienced any challenges, it’s been great having them to turn to as extra team members with loads of valuable experience.

Yes, absolutely. At Fable, we see a lot of opportunity beyond the dining table, and we plan to continue on our mission to bring elevated home decor into every area of the home. This year, we launched premium Japanese glassware and Belgian linen to complement our sustainably crafted ceramics and flatware, and we’re launching a handful of exciting new products this year and next that we can’t wait to share with you. Keep an eye out!

COVID-19 and recent supply chain constraints have impacted our business in a few different ways. More than anything, they’ve put strains on freight forwarding, which has largely impacted our logistical ability to move our products from Portugal or Japan to our warehouse in Burnaby, BC. In turn, this has caused challenges with getting our products to our customers and community. We’ve chosen to be transparent with our community in clearly communicating the issues we’re facing, and we’ve been fortunate to see an overwhelmingly positive response so far. The understanding, patience, and continued support has been really great to see.

I think one of the biggest shifts we’ll see, and are already seeing, is with how people work. I believe that remote work is here to stay, and will continue to evolve to become a more global practice.

I spend most of my days working remotely from Europe, which puts me in a different time zone than most of my team members. I structure my workday to better align with theirs by starting later in the day, which means free mornings and late nights.

I typically start my day by taking Nash, our 2-year-old Golden Retriever, for a walk to grab a specialty coffee before I head off to train or play a match of tennis. Around noon, I either find a patio to sit on or head home for lunch. After that, I take a nap for 30 minutes to an hour before starting the workday around 2:00-3:00pm. Working remotely gives me the freedom to make dinner, take Nash for a night walk, and have a few calls with team members in the evenings. I usually have three to five Nespressos to keep me awake until the workday is done, around midnight or 1:00am local time.

The ability to execute and think strategically. I think most people either fall into the category of having big build ideas but not knowing how to get them off the ground, or the opposite—being able to do the work, but not having the vision to execute the bigger picture.

When I was very young, around 10 years old, I loved playing with Lego. I had a subscription to Lego Club Magazine, and became so passionate about being featured in it that I submitted multiple times. Finally, after submitting photos of a Lego submarine I made from scratch, I was featured in the magazine. To me, the takeaway was that if you really want to make something happen, it’s possible. I still live by that to this day.

Rafa Nadal, the Spanish professional tennis player. I’d love to play a game of tennis with him, and to have the opportunity to really seek to understand his ability to lift an entire community. He’s a big inspiration.

The Dove and The Ant. As mentioned in an earlier answer, it’s one of Aesop’s fables (which technically makes it a fable, not a parable, but close enough) that inspired our name. It teaches the importance of the ability to always show kindness, which is at the root of everything we do at Fable. Showing kindness to the earth via sustainably crafted products and eco-friendly packaging, and showing kindness to each other as a team and our community as a whole.

I really look up to Maj Masad, the Co-Founder of Mejuri. He’s someone that I’ve been fortunate enough to both work with and learn from as we build Fable.

In my free time, I like to play tennis, spend time with my girlfriend Denise and our Golden Retriever, Nash, and travel. Since relocating to Europe last year, I’ve been able to make the most of days off and weekends by jetting off (or driving) to different European cities and countries to sightsee and explore, and it’s been amazing.

To me, success is all about fulfillment—getting to live a life of fulfilling days where you really feel like you’ve been able to create and build something that brings joy to other people, and improves their lives in some way.

Books:

1. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, by Carol S. Dweck

2. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari

3. Good To Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t, by James C. Collins

Health & Fitness:

1. Tennis

2. Beach volleyball

3. Gym / weightlifting

Brands:

1. Lululemon

2. Kit & Ace

3. Nike

Products:

1. Nespresso

2. Red wine

3. Japanese chef’s knife

Newsletters & Podcasts:

1. Nik Sharma

2. Bad Blood (currently)

3. Crime Junkie

Upcoming Vacation Spots:

1. Georgia

2. Morocco

3. Norway

NATE CHECKETTS

Founder & CEO of Rhone, a premium apparel brand for men.

Rhone is premium men’s apparel made for where you sweat, live, and work. Rhone delivers best-in-class products, engineered with performance technologies and premium fabrics designed to fill the void in the men’s premium activewear market.

As I was graduating from BYU, I launched my first venture backed startup which was a mobile software company. That was my first experience working with investors, building out a leadership team and trying to grow a company. We eventually sold that business to the 49ers and I then worked for and consulted with many companies: Cisco, FanVision, Sport Radar and The National Football League, to name a few. But, my passion always lied with creating, building, and being challenged. I ended up launching four different companies before the age of 30 and Rhone was the last one.

If you told me fifteen years ago that I would have started a men’s apparel company, I would have never believed it because fashion and apparel wasn’t something I had any background in or something I paid attention to. Rhone was built because we saw a gap in the men’s activewear market and we felt there was a big opportunity in the space.

Our name was inspired by the Rhone river in Europe as it was not only aesthetically beautiful but was also once a valued trade route. That’s exactly how we approach our products. We start with the world’s finest fabrics, pair them with cutting edge textile technology, and finish with an unmatched fit and style to create clothing that satisfies both form and function.

My favorite part of being an entrepreneur is the ability to innovate, to evolve, and to always look for ways to improve. To me, that constant need to reinvest yourself is invigorating and exciting. I also really enjoy building a team and working to be a better leader that they can rely on and put trust in. And of course I really have grown to love creating tangible product vs working in software. It is such a great experience to hand someone a product you have dreamed about and created and see that product positively impact their day / life.

I think the biggest challenge for me personally is I have high expectations and it is easy when you crest one milestone to constantly be thinking about the next one vs reflecting on what you have accomplished thus far. I’m wired a bit to always be looking forward (hence our tagline) but there is real value in looking back and reflecting. One of the quotes I need to remind myself often is “Comparison is the thief of joy.” There will always be someone doing better than you and most people only experience joy and sorry in relativity--meaning they are only happy relative to those they know or are aware of vs happy in the absolute. I have learned that taking stock of what I have, have been given and been blessed with and focusing on that daily gratitude helps center me and ground me in the highs and lows of building a company. There are days I feel like we are unstoppable and days where I don’t know how we will get through an obstacle but gratitude always brings me back to how fortunate I am to even have the ability to do what I do.

Most exciting Rhone moment? I think telling my mom we were opening a store on 5th Ave is one of the most exciting Rhone moments for me. It just felt like such a milestone to be across from Nike, New Balance and other giants of industry and exciting to be on an iconic New York street.

The fundraising process has always been a bit of a roller coaster. Unlike many of the companies in our space we have never used a banker. It has always been driven by people who are passionate and excited about the brand and product. We have some incredible investors on our cap table including a few former NFL players like Justin Tuck and Troy Aikman (one Giant and one Cowboy). We also have great personalities and investors including David Stern who invested before he passed, Steve Bornstein and others we are not allowed to share publicly. Lastly we have been backed by the largest Global consumer PE firm L Catterton.

It starts with our core of who we are, what we stand for and being really clear about that across all of our channels and platforms.

We lean heavily into earned media, leveraging third party endorsements from media and influencers trying the product. We also do paid media on Instagram and other platforms, as well as partner with like minded fitness and health brands.

There are always opportunities to expand into new categories and product lines. While growth is always a goal, we want to achieve it in a way that makes sense for the brand and for the customer. Our product and creative teams are extremely innovative; we love to test out different products and ideas, but overall, we value the customers’ feedback and requests and work from there.

As has been said by others, COVID didn’t necessarily change our industry but it accelerated changes that were already happening. The biggest functional change has been shifting distribution models and a push towards direct channels like ecomm and owned retail vs wholesale. The biggest overarching changes are a continued push towards brands with purpose and a focus on making responsible decisions for our climate. All of these were already core focuses for us and we have been fortunate to be well positioned moving forward.

Morning: My mornings tend to start early. I wake up and move to my home gym and generally do a 30-40 min focused fitness session that has varied through the years. The key for me is moving and getting my body ready for the day. I then take my oldest to school who starts about an hour earlier than his peers. He’s a great kid and I really value my time with him during our drive. I then come back and focus on my day plan, clearing any emails. Next I will go meet my next 2 boys who are starting to stir and over the last 5 months we will do some soccer training together. 10-15 mins each. Then we grab breakfast together and they hop on the bus. After that I shower, get dressed and get ready for work. I try to keep my morning relatively clear for execution and limited meetings.

Afternoon: My afternoons are heavily focused on meetings. I like to go into my meetings prepared and thus really use the morning to get ready for that part of the day. They are often back to back with little break in between but it helps keep things moving and I’d rather protect consistent blocks of time in the morning vs spreading meetings out.

Evening: Evenings are heavily dependent on the day of the week. I try and keep 1 day a week for NYC days where I will often meet someone for a dinner or a later meeting, 1 night for a date night for my wife, 1 night where my wife is generally out and it’s me and the boys, 1 night for some volunteer work at my local church congregation where I get to do great activities with 14-15 year olds in a faith based environment and lastly 1 family night where we will often watch a movie or play a game together.

Top three qualities entrepreneurs should have are: patience, adaptability, and leadership.

Advice for entrepreneurs starting out:

Hire the best people possible. It’s cliché advice but it’s given for a reason — your team is the most important decision you make. From top to bottom, surround yourself with people that are motivated, intelligent, and versatile.

Define your brand’s voice and be consistent in every execution with it. This ties in with having an authentic brand, and it can be incredibly beneficial to have consistent and authentic messaging that people can relate to.

Customers crave authenticity. To every extent possible, it’s incredibly important to live your brand and to make it authentic and relatable. When you radiate authenticity, others pick up on that and will naturally gravitate towards your brand.

Don’t be afraid to go slow in the short-term so you can go fast in the long-term. Too often upstart brands come out hot without laying a solid foundation for what’s to come. It’s important to build a solid core before really looking to take off in new areas.

Get to know your customers. Spend some time with them in a physical environment and ask questions. Community feedback and relationships can be vital for an upstart brand looking to gain traction. Even with the utility and reach of online communication, there’s still no substitute for face-to-face interaction with your customers.

Recently, I had the opportunity to speak on a panel and one question that was asked was, “If you could go back to your eighteen-year-old self and give one piece of advice, what would you say?” Someone on the panel shared his response and it’s something that really stuck with me. He said, “I would tell myself that there are weeds in your life and there are flowers in your life. Don’t spend your time watering the weeds. What we give life to, what we give water to, what we give air to, what we give focus to, is what grows.” So over the last few months I have reminded myself every time something hard happens that I need to focus on watering the flowers.

Honestly and not meaning to cop out here, I generally have not enjoyed conversations with famous people nearly as much as people I admire who are successful without a lot of the attention. I am drawn to great thinkers and builders. Right now, one CEO I admire is RJ Scaringe who founded Rivian and has built it into an incredible brand and company with meaning.

One of my favorite quotes is the Rhone mantra of “Forever Forward.” We all make mistakes, take steps backward or get lost at various times in our life. And that is okay. It happens. But, if we just keep on focusing on moving forward and making progress in whatever we are pursuing, that gives life great meaning. Life isn’t like a road where you can be stationary--I’ve found it’s much more like an escalator and you are either moving forward or backward. It starts with focus and intention then a lot of work and self reflection. 

My parents are my role models. My mother is an incredibly giving human and she has always taught me how to be a more patient, caring being. My father was very successful in the workplace but was always a father first. He has never been afraid to show his emotions or lead by quiet example. I’m truly blessed to have such wonderful and inspirational parents that I admire and still learn from today.

When I have free time, I generally love to spend it on activities with my kids. Recently we have really gotten into wakesurfing at a local lake. It’s become my favorite activity, getting in that water just refreshes me and it’s low impact but a lot of fun. It’s been great seeing my kids pick up a new skill that they can excel at.  

My parents often quoted the phrase “no success can compensate for failure in the home.” So as a husband and father of 3 that has to be the first priority for me. Raising my boys and helping them become the best they can is what will mean success for me. In addition to striving to be the best parent and spouse I can be-- I try to be all in on what I have committed to in my life. I love our team at Rhone and am committed to building a brand they are proud to work at and that our investors believe is a financial success. I am fortunate to serve as the Chairman of an incredible non profit called Beyond Type 1 which helps people globally who live with Diabetes --now both Type 1 and Type 2. And I am deeply committed to my faith and serving in my local congregation.

My hobbies tend to be focused on investing in and advising other consumer startups--that is really where I derive a lot of energy and excitement. With all of these commitments I admittedly don’t really relax well--I’ve never been someone who can sit on a beach or play several rounds of golf without getting anxious about productivity. I don’t necessarily wear that as a badge of honor--it’s just the way I’m wired. But for me, success means living a very full life, prioritizing my faith and family and positively impacting others lives through the building of great companies and brands.

Books:

1. The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, by Stephen Covey

2. Grit, by Angela Duckworth

3. Effortless, by Greg Mckeown

Health & Fitness:

1. Clean Simple Eats for Nutrition (the best clean protein powders and supplements in the market and incredible macro based recipes)

2. Oura Ring

3. Peloton Tread

4. Ladder Training

Brands:

1. I honestly wear 90% Rhone --we believe we can handle about 90% of a modern guys closet today.

2. For formal my go to is The Knot Standard

3. For footwear I wear Taft or Wolf & Shepherd for formal and York Athletics or Adidas for active

Products:

1. Clean Simple Eats Products

2. AirPods

3. Traeger Grill

Newsletters & Podcasts:

1. The Daily by The NY Times

2. Against The Odds

3. Business Wars

4. What’s Essential by Greg Mckeown

Upcoming Vacation Spots:

1. Charleston, South Carolina

2. Iceland

MATT MULLENAX

Founder & CEO of Huron, a modern-day skin care brand for men.

Huron is a men’s care brand whose mission is to help guys help themselves. We’ve created the intersection of premium products and a relatable vibe. All of our competitors from a product and formulation perspective charge anywhere between 3-10x our price points. Our goal is to pass as much value -- cost savings, education, etc -- to our end customer as possible.

My career has been in the consumer/retail space. I started my career in investment banking covering retail and consumer brands. From banking, I left to join Bonobos in the company’s infancy (6 employees), which was one of the earliest DTC brands (although ‘DTC’ did not yet exist). After Bonobos, I spent time on the investing side at a consumer PE firm.

In my investing role, we looked at so many brands targeting the female consumer and disrupting the category. Amazing product/packaging, compelling founder stories and brilliant management teams. But in my late-20s, I was still going to CVS/Walgreens and buying the exact same products that I had been using for 15-20 years. There was a massive disconnect.

Aside from the professional interest, I was also a kid that grew up with bad skin. I tried everything. I threw the kitchen sink at my skin issues. From wandering the aisles of grocery stores to sitting in sterile dermatologist offices, nothing seemed to work. I finally splurged and purchased a ‘premium’ face wash and for whatever reason, the product resonated with my skin. But I didn’t know anyone who’d a) pay that price point consistently; or b) want to go through that discovery process. So, we set out to build a brand that offers a similar level of product quality and efficacy using the world’s best ingredients, but at a much more approachable price point.

Huron was the street that I lived on in Chicago when my skin issues were at their worst. I wake up every morning with an intimate understanding of the consumer that we’re fighting for. Because I was that guy 10 years ago.

We operate as a small team of 4. So, there are a number of administrative tasks that we tackle on a weekly/monthly basis that aren’t the most intellectually stimulating. For me, that’s accounting-related tasks, taxes, etc.

Diving into consumer insights has been one of my favorite aspects. Understanding what makes our existing (and potential) customers tick, what problems they’re solving, and what they’re looking for in a personal care brand are data points that we’re maniacal in collecting. So digging into the data to understand how we can position and differentiate ourselves in the category is one of my favorite parts of the journey thus far.

We’ve been fortunate to raise capital from ‘operational-angels’ and funds who have operational experience. We wanted an investor base that consists of ex-operators who have navigated the DTC and consumer landscape, who can help us think through strategic initiatives but also more tactical exercises (hiring, retail, marketing, etc.).

We think holistically about our base and where they would (and would not) like to see us. We’re constantly testing new platforms and acquisition channels.

In regards to product pipeline, we will continue to launch products that we know our customers want. This intel comes from anecdotal data points (surveys) but also an intuitive conviction around certain products. Our aim is to help our consumer across the bathroom, so a number of products and product categories are in-play for us.

Consumers are much more comfortable (and now attune to) ordering products online. E-commerce will continue to grow and scale as a % of industry-wide sales. However, Amazon has conditioned -- for better or for worse -- consumers to expect 2-day shipping. So fast turnarounds, reliable supply chains, and strong fulfillment partnerships will only grow in importance moving forward.

I’m very much a morning person. My alarm is set for 4:30am every weekday, but I’m usually up beforehand. I’ll eat a small snack, have a bit of coffee and do some work for 30-45 min before either running or going to the gym. My wife and I make breakfast together every morning around 7:45am and then we start our respective days.

We’ve been WFH since March of 2020, but have started going back a few days per week to a WeWork. Typically I’ll work until 7pm or so, break for dinner with my wife, and then address some email afterwards.

After, we’ll watch whatever show we’re into and try to be in bed before 11pm or so.

I’m a data nerd, clearly, so I leverage my Whoop to lean on sleep stats.

Constant optimist. Believe in the mission. Set the tone for your team that you’re building something special. Something that is going to work. As a founder/co-founder, the team is looking to you for that confidence and conviction.

Adhere to the golden ratio. I once heard a business leader refer to the ‘golden ratio’ - the fact that we all have two ears and one mouth. Listen twice as much as you speak. Internalize the perspectives and voice of your team. What’s working? What’s causing friction and frustrations? Give your team an opportunity to voice how they’re feeling and what challenges they’re facing.

Know your limitations. We’re all guilty of trying to do everything. But it’s impossible. Even at an early-stage, you must figure out how and when to delegate. What are your strong suits that you can lean on? What are areas that are not strengths and would be too costly and/or timely to develop (e.g. Facebook media buying experience, supply chain management, etc.). Execute on the former and delegate the latter.

I have a professional mentor who was a high-ranking senior officer in the Navy SEALs. When asked why are the SEALs so successful in their operations, he simply said ‘we don’t pick a fair fight.’

Extrapolated to the startup realm, it’s important to understand where your advantages are and how to leverage them at scale. Is it an organic marketing channel? Is it an important supplier relationship? Is it a retail partnership? Understanding your points of differentiation is imperative to separating from your competition.

Elon Musk. He’s ‘bet the house’ on his own ventures multiple times. It would be fun to learn about how to channel this ‘irrational optimism’ and building at rapid scale.

This is my favorite time of the year. I’m a huge college football fan. Being from Ohio, Ohio State is my team. My Saturdays revolve around when they play. It’s a nice 3 hour mental break.

My wife and I have also been running together. We’re running the New York City marathon in a few weeks, so it’s been fun to train together and embrace a new challenge.

Building a brand that is customer-first and executes on our vision to be a helpful hand to our consumers.

Books:

1. The Power of Habit

2. Shoe Dog

3. Billion Dollar Loser

Health & Fitness:

1. CrossFit (I go to CrossFit Union Square in NYC)

2. Running

3. Garmin / Whoop

Brands:

1. Nike

2. TenThousand / Wolaco

3. Hoka One

Products:

1. Wandering Bear Cold Brew and Jot

2. Ascent Protein (Chocolate PB)

3. LMNT (hydration) 

Newsletters & Podcasts:

1. 2pm

2. Morning Brew

3. All-In Podcast

WILL YOUNG

CEO & Co-Founder of Sana, a full-stack health insurance solution for small businesses.

Sana is a full-stack health insurance solution for small businesses. Sana customers save an average of 20% on healthcare costs while offering their employees rich benefits and access to premium virtual-first care options. There’s a lot under the hood we do to make it work, but it starts with an obsession with patients getting great care at low cost, and it turns out there are a lot of ways to make our health system work better.

I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I have a lot of entrepreneurs in my family, and I looked up to them. I loved the idea of creating something new that could benefit society and building a company that people loved to work at. My Co-Founder Nathan Hackley and I came up with the idea for Sana while we were at Justworks, the payroll and benefits company we were at previously. We saw how broken and expensive health insurance was for businesses. It felt like a big opportunity. 

Neither Nathan nor I come from healthcare backgrounds. Across my career, I’ve worked in Hollywood, in big tech, and in startups. Nathan is a software engineer and designer. Being new to the industry was actually a big advantage for us. When a system is as broken as US healthcare, it can be really helpful to start with a blank slate and work on solutions from first principles. That’s how we started Sana and continue to think about problem-solving today.

The best part of starting a business is the people—getting to work with a small group of talented, mission-driven people to build something new. I’m so proud of the team we have, and I enjoy working with them immensely. It’s energizing. The flipside of that is that at times we’ve hired people who aren’t a fit, and we’ve had to let them go. Managing the cases that don’t work out is the worst part of being an entrepreneur. We invest a lot in our interviewing process to mitigate that risk.

It was so challenging to get our first customer. I understood why prospects were reluctant to try Sana: Who wants to be the guinea pig for a new health insurance product? It took us a year and a half of grinding and selling before we got someone to say yes. We only had so much cash in the bank, and every month the funds depleted a little more. I had so much anxiety about it. If we didn’t land a customer, the business could have died before it even had a chance. That was the hardest phase for Sana. Landing that first customer was the most exciting moment because it marked our transition into having actual operations and things started to snowball from there.

Fundraising was very hard at the beginning. We raised angel capital fairly quickly, but institutions balked initially. We have a complicated product that spans insurance, healthcare and small business sales and most VCs were overwhelmed with the complexity of it. Nearly everyone we talked with said we were “too early” for them—even some pre-seed firms, which is hilarious. I quickly learned that “too early” was code for “I’m never going to invest.” After kissing a lot of frogs, we got lucky and found a strategic partner from the world of insurance who understood our vision (Greenlight Re) and then found a couple of VCs who didn’t mind taking bets on complicated models (Gigafund and Trust Ventures). They gave us the capital we needed to prove out the business.

Now, fundraising is easier. We have fast growth and happy customers, and it’s more about optimizing for partners and terms instead of an existential concern like it was in the early days. 

Nathan Hackley is my Co-Founder. He is excellent at many things that I am not—engineering, design, product management. More generally, he has a rare ability to understand what customers need and translate that into a technical system that delivers the solution. I am much stronger at the business stuff - finance, partnerships, growth, etc. Our skills are different, but we are very aligned on how we want to build Sana. We see eye to eye on mission and values. I trust his judgment implicitly. We both enjoy being non-conformist, which makes working together fun and probably makes us better founders. We were really lucky to join forces at the inception of Sana. We built a lot of great foundational stuff very quickly with just the two of us because we had a very clear understanding of where we were going, divided work into our separate lanes and just sprinted in parallel. 

Sana operates health plans for our customers, so COVID was top of mind for us more than typical firms. Our member advocates and website are the front doors to care for many of our members, so we tried to help people in need as much as possible. We promoted telemedicine when people were scared to do in-person visits, promoted vaccine availability where possible and made free mental health visits available to members as the pandemic dragged on. 

Inside of Sana, we have always been a remote-first company. In that way, switching to “work from home” wasn’t much of a challenge. In fact, Nathan and I feel like many of our views on distributed work have been validated as companies test it out and find it can be really great for a lot of people.

The silver lining of COVID is that it has laid bare so many issues with our healthcare delivery system and has prompted healthy responses from regulators. Coming out of COVID, I hope we see more sustained adoption of telemedicine, a relaxation of licensing restrictions for practicing medicine cross-borders, more regulations to promote hospital price transparency, and increased support for marginalized groups that are typically underinsured. 

Our core competency is a cultural one. We actually care about your experience with healthcare, and we are trying to make it cheaper and better. The incumbent carriers really don’t care about that stuff. They are too stuck in their ways, and their incentives are perverse in a myriad of ways.

I have a year-old daughter who is my alarm clock at 6:30 in the morning. I get to start every day playing with a little baby in pajamas, which I love, even though I am not a morning person. After that, I get ready for work and try to keep the first hour or two of my workday free to think and prioritize. I have a note-taking app, and I keep a daily journal where I lay out my priorities and log what I’m thinking about and whether I’m doing a good job of taking care of myself mentally and physically. That way, I start each day intentionally. The rest of my day is mostly meetings and replying to emails, sadly. It’s not very glamorous. Part of me misses the early days at Sana of focused, quiet work, where I was helping to build the products directly. My job now is mostly coordination between internal stakeholders and talking with investors or strategic partners, so meetings are the name of the game. I don’t work too late most days, maybe to 5 or 6. After work, I try to make time to work out, but I could be better about that. Most nights, I’m good at unplugging for a quiet dinner with my wife and daughter before doing our baby’s bedtime routine. 

You really only need one: extreme drive. If you have that, you can figure everything else out. Being a great entrepreneur isn’t rocket science. It is, however, extremely hard. Firing people is hard. Hearing “no” a thousand times from investors and customers is hard. Losing early customers is hard. Entrepreneurship is “Eating glass while staring into the abyss,” as Elon Musk says. You need to have something abnormal under the hood pushing you to persevere. 

My advice for early entrepreneurs, if you’re serious, is to start. Now. Quit your job. Pitch the idea to investors. Start hearing “no.” Stop making excuses. You’ll likely fail, and that’s fine. It’s not for everyone, but the only way to know for sure whether it’s for you is to try it.

In the early days of Sana, I pitched our business idea to a number of “important” people in the industry. In one week, I pitched the CEO of a prominent insurance carrier, and later I pitched the president of an industry association we were joining. Both of those people told me Sana was a terrible idea and I shouldn’t pursue it. I felt so deflated after each call. These were people who had worked in the industry for decades and knew the business inside and out. It was hard for me as a small beans startup founder with no customers to get a meeting with them. I finally got the call set, gave them my best pitch, and they were so dismissive of all these innovative approaches I thought would work. Those conversations shook me and had me revisit all of my assumptions for the business to make sure I wasn’t wasting my time and our angel investors’ money. Ultimately I disagreed with their assessments and continued to pursue the idea.

It’s pretty clear to me now that those guys were full of it. Dead wrong. Didn’t know what they were talking about.

I take a few lessons away from those calls:

First, is that you need to build conviction in your idea from first principles, not from what conventional wisdom says. Trust your own perspective and logic.

Second, is that people who have been in an industry for decades are going to be resistant to change, even if that change makes sense. So don’t sweat it if they don’t see the world as you do.

Third, is that if your business makes sense, but industry veterans think it’s a bad idea, that’s actually something that should make you really excited.

Being contrarian and right is the only way to really outperform as an entrepreneur, and important people telling you your baby is ugly is a symptom of being onto something exciting.

I’m really interested in biotech and the science behind increasing healthspan. I think the next several decades will bring some really exciting changes to our ability to program our bodies and conquer diseases. We already are seeing that in a small way with the mRNA COVID vaccines that were synthesized days after sequencing the virus’ genome. So I might meet with a scientist like Jennifer Doudna or Shinya Yamanaka, though I’d probably make a fool of myself because I’m such a novice in that domain. 

Mostly I hang out with my wife and daughter. I used to read a lot and road bike, but being a Dad really sucks up a lot of free time. 

My favorite business school professor was a guy named Clay Christensen, who sadly passed away last year. He’s famous for coining the term “disruptive innovation,” and his books and class were hugely influential on how I approach company-building. In addition to his books on business, he wrote a book called “How Will You Measure Your Life” that contemplates what it means to live a meaningful life. My main takeaway from it is that success in life is ultimately about how well you cultivate relationships. When I’m at the end of my life, I hope the people around me feel like I’ve made their lives better. To accomplish that, I prioritize spending meaningful, focused time with my family above everything else. With Sana, I care about creating a work environment that people find empowering and inspiring. Ultimately I hope we build a business that makes the world a better place.

Books:

1. The Innovators Dilemma (business)

2. Foundation Trilogy (Sci-Fi)

3. The Three Body Problem (More Sci-Fi. I like Sci-Fi, obviously)

Health & Fitness:

1. Garage gym. Lifting heavy weights is the best.

2. Zero - intermittent fasting app

3. Peloton (basic, I know)

Brands:

1. Chubbies (proud Sana customer!)

2. State Bags backpack for work stuff. It’s awesome.

Products:

1. Standing desk from Uplift

2. Cold brew coffee every morning

Upcoming Vacation Spots:

Bali. My wife and I were supposed to go for our honeymoon in 2020 but had to cancel. Someday we will actually do it.

Business development is a challenging task that requires hard work, dedication, and resilience. Even with careful planning, unforeseen challenges can arise, causing setbacks and potentially threatening the business’s survival. So, building a resilient business is crucial because it enables you to adapt to unexpected changes. It also helps you withstand unforeseen events and challenges like economic downturns, natural disasters, or pandemics. You can recover quickly and continue to operate effectively, minimizing disruptions to customers, employees, and stakeholders.

This article aims to help you familiarize yourself with several strategies, such as diversifying revenue streams, building strategic partnerships, and developing a strong company culture, among others. These strategies can help you survive and thrive in the face of adversity.

And implementing these strategies requires some initial steps, such as identifying potential challenges, factors for consideration, and more, which we shall discuss in later sections.

Let us start.

Business resilience refers to the ability of a company to adapt and withstand unexpected disruptions and challenges, such as catastrophes, techno-economic downturns, or cyber-attacks, while continuing to operate effectively.

Characteristics of resilient businesses are defined by flexibility, agility, and the ability to quickly pivot their operations and strategies in response to dynamic circumstances.

It has strong risk management practices in place, including contingency business plans, crisis communication protocols, and robust supply chain management.

In today’s world, where the pace of change and uncertainty are unstable, business resilience has become crucial for long-term success.

Companies that prioritize resilience are better equipped to navigate challenges and emerge stronger from disruptions, while those that fail (to do so) risk irreparable damage to their reputation and bottom line.

Now let us move on to.

Businesses may face several challenges, including socioeconomic plunge, natural tragedies, regulatory changes, supply chain disruptions, cyber-attacks, and shifting consumer preferences.

To identify these potential challenges, you should conduct a comprehensive risk assessment that examines internal and external factors that may impact your business operations. This may involve analyzing financial statements, conducting market research, monitoring industry trends, and engaging with stakeholders.

Anticipating and preparing for challenges requires a proactive approach, including developing emergency plans, establishing clear communication protocols, diversifying supply chains, investing in cybersecurity measures, and ensuring adequate insurance plans coverage.

You must also regularly review and update your risk management strategies to ensure they remain relevant and effective in the face of evolving threats. Taking a proactive and strategic approach to risk management can mitigate potential challenges and ensure long-term success.

Moving on, we shall briefly go through and understand the

By implementing resilient strategies, businesses can survive and thrive in today’s dynamic and unpredictable environment. However, implementing resilient strategies can be a complex and multi-faceted process, requiring careful consideration of various factors.

So, in the following sections, we shall discuss which factors are essential when implementing resilient business strategies.

Business goals provide direction and purpose to the organization’s resilience efforts. By incorporating business goals into the resilience strategy, you can prioritize your efforts and allocate resources accordingly.

Ultimately, considering business goals is critical to ensure the resilience strategy is meaningful and impactful rather than a separate initiative disconnected from the organization’s broader objectives.

Risk assessment enables you to identify potential threats and vulnerabilities to your operations. It helps you develop a proactive and strategic approach to managing those risks. You can clearly understand risk exposure, including internal and external factors.

It enables you to develop and prioritize resilience initiatives tailored to their specific risks and vulnerabilities and effectively allocate resources to manage them.

On top of that, you can stay ahead of potential threats and position yourself to respond effectively in the event of a disruption, ultimately enhancing your long-term resilience and success.

Resource allocation stimulates you to prioritize and allocate resources to support your resilience efforts effectively. It helps you design comprehensive and effective resilience strategies with the proper allocation of resources, including financial, technological, and human resources.

It requires a careful balance between short-term priorities and long-term resilience. By prioritizing resource allocation and aligning it with overall strategic goals, you can enhance your resilience and position your business for long-term success.

Resilient Leaders play a key role in setting the direction and priorities of an organization. Without their support and buy-in, allocating resources and making necessary changes can be challenging to ensure the organization can withstand disruptions and adapt to changing circumstances.

Leaders who prioritize resilience can also inspire and motivate their teams to embrace a culture of resilience, leading to better outcomes in the face of adversity. Therefore, leadership & team support is essential to effectively implement and sustain a resilient strategy.

Employees are often on the front lines of any disruptions or challenges an organization may face. By involving employees in developing and implementing a resilient strategy, you can tap into their insights and expertise to identify potential risks and develop effective response plans. Moreover, employees feel valued and empowered to contribute to your organization’s resilience.

Communication plays a central role in ensuring that everyone in your organization understands their roles and responsibilities in the face of disruptions or challenges.

Effective communication helps to build trust, keep stakeholders informed, and coordinate responses, all of which are essential for responding to and recovering from disruptions.

Furthermore, communication is crucial to identify emerging risks and opportunities and enable you to adjust strategies accordingly.

Monitoring and evaluation provide essential feedback on the strategies’ effectiveness and implementation. By monitoring and evaluating, you can identify areas of strength and weakness and adjust your strategies accordingly.

This process helps you learn from past experiences, continuously improve resilience, and be better prepared for future disruptions.

Furthermore, monitoring and evaluation can help identify emerging risks and enable you to take proactive measures to mitigate or prevent them.

Compliance with regulations enhances your organization’s reputation and increases stakeholder trust, which can be critical during challenging times.

Whereas, failure to comply with regulations can lead to legal and financial consequences that impede your ability to respond to and recover from disruptions.

Therefore, you must ensure that your resilience strategies are aligned with regulatory requirements to avoid any negative impacts on their operations.

Technological infrastructure forms the backbone of the organization’s operations and can be a key enabler of resilience.

Robust technological infrastructure, including hardware, software, and networks, can help to ensure that critical systems and processes can continue to function in the face of disruptions.

Moreover, technology can be used to facilitate remote work and collaboration with virtual call center software, enabling you to maintain operational continuity even during uncertain times of crisis.

Partnerships and collaborations provide access to resources, expertise, and support you may not have. By collaborating with external partners, you can build a support network that can help mitigate risks and respond to disruptions.

On top of that, partnerships can also provide opportunities for sharing knowledge and best practices, which can help to strengthen your organization’s resilience over time.

In response to and recovery from disruptions, a crisis management plan provides a framework for managing the situation.

By having a clear and comprehensive crisis management plan in place, you can minimize the impact of disruptions, reduce downtime, and ensure the safety of employees and stakeholders.

With regular development and testing of a crisis management plan, you can ensure you are prepared to respond effectively to a wide range of potential disruptions.

Employee training offers multiple benefits. Employee training ensures that employees have the knowledge and skills they need to respond effectively to disruptions. With regular training, you can prepare employees to identify and mitigate risks, manage crises, and recover quickly from disruptions. Training can also help build a resilience culture by promoting awareness and understanding of your organization’s resilience strategies and goals.

Continuous improvement enables you to adapt and evolve in response to changing circumstances. By continuously evaluating and refining your resilience strategies, you can identify areas for improvement, implement new solutions, and stay ahead of emerging risks.

It can also help to build a resilience culture by fostering a resilient mindset of ongoing learning and adaptation. Moreover, as disruptions become increasingly complex and unpredictable, it can help you stay agile and resilient in the face of new challenges.

Finally, it’s time to master the

To ensure the long-term success of your business, you must develop strategies to overcome challenges and build resilience. In the following section, we will explore some strategies to help you overcome challenges and become more resilient in the face of adversity.

Diversifying your business’s operations, products, or services creates multiple income streams, reducing dependence on a single product development or service supply and tapping into new markets. Expanding your offerings can mitigate the impact of downturns in one area and maintain revenue streams.

On top of that, offering a broader range of products or services can attract new customers and increase market share. It makes your business more adaptable to changes in consumer preferences or industry trends. Overall, diversification can provide a buffer against unexpected challenges and position a business for long-term success.

Continuous improvement enables you to create a culture of learning and innovation. By regularly reviewing and optimizing processes, products, and services, you can identify and address weaknesses, improve efficiency and quality, and stay ahead of the competition. You can gather valuable insights and ideas for improvement through feedback and collaboration from employees, customers, and others.

This ongoing focus on improvement can help you adapt to changes in market conditions and maintain a competitive edge while fostering a sense of ownership and engagement among employees.

Identifying potential risks and developing strategies to mitigate them helps you minimize the impact of unexpected events and ensure the continuity of operations. It includes risk assessments related to financial, operational, legal, and reputational factors and implementing measures to prevent or minimize their impact.

You can avoid potential threats and adapt to changing circumstances by regularly reviewing and updating risk management plans. Effective risk management can also help you comply with regulations and industry standards, build trust with customers and stakeholders, and ultimately protect your reputation.

Collaborating with other successful businesses enables you to access new markets, resources, and expertise to help you grow your business and adapt to changing circumstances. It can include partnerships with suppliers, distributors, or other businesses in the same industry and collaborations with academic institutions, research organizations, or government agencies.

By sharing knowledge, resources, and networks, you can increase resilience and leverage your partners’ strengths to achieve common goals. Additionally, strategic partnerships can help you stay abreast of industry trends and changes and provide valuable innovation and business growth opportunities.

Creating a detailed budget, forecasting cash flows, and establishing financial targets are crucial to managing your resources and making informed decisions about investments, growth opportunities, and risk management strategies. Financial planning includes setting aside contingency funds, maintaining adequate cash reserves, and diversifying sources of revenue.

By regularly monitoring and analyzing financial performance, you can identify potential problems and take corrective action before they become major issues. A solid financial plan can also help you secure funding from investors or lenders and ensure compliance with financial regulations and reporting requirements.

A positive and supportive culture can help attract and retain top talent, foster collaboration & teamwork, and promote innovation and creativity. A strong company culture can also help employees feel more engaged and committed to the business’s success.

It leads to higher productivity, better customer base service, and a more positive reputation in the marketplace. Additionally, a strong company culture can help you weather crises and challenges, as employees are more likely to work together and support each other during difficult times.

If you are adaptable to changing circumstances, you can quickly pivot to new opportunities, respond to emerging trends, and overcome unexpected setbacks. Resilience requires you to be open to new business ideas and feedback and regularly review and revise strategies and plans as needed.

A flexible business can adjust its operations to meet changing customer needs and preferences and stay ahead of competitors by introducing new products or services. Moreover, business flexibility enables you to quickly adapt to changes in the market, such as shifts in demand or disruptions in global supply chains.

Building a resilient business enables you to adapt and respond quickly to unexpected challenges, crises, and disruptions, such as economic downturns or pandemics.

Building a resilient business is crucial in today’s rapidly changing business landscape. It enables you to adapt and respond quickly to unexpected challenges, crises, and disruptions, such as economic downturns or pandemics. You can minimize the impact of such events, maintain operations, and emerge stronger from the crisis.

It also allows you to seize new opportunities and stay competitive by being agile and innovative. Building a resilient business can enhance your long-term sustainability, build customer loyalty, and secure future success.

Finally, with a proactive approach to building resilience into your business strategy, you can ensure your company’s long-term viability and success in an ever-changing world. You can diversify your revenue streams, adopt flexible and agile business models, invest in technology and digitalization, maintain strong relationships with customers, employees, and stakeholders, and design a well-defined crisis management plan.

The post Building a Resilient Business: Strategies for Overcoming Challenges appeared first on The Total Entrepreneurs.

In today’s digital age, software plays a critical role in the success of any business. From managing finances to communication and marketing, software has become an essential tool for businesses of all sizes. However, identifying the right software for your business can be a daunting task. With so many options available, it can be challenging to determine which software solution will best meet your business needs.

The first step in identifying software needs for your business is to assess your current business processes and determine where there may be gaps or inefficiencies. For example, do you struggle with managing your finances, or do you find it difficult to track inventory? Identifying these pain points will help you prioritize the software solutions that are most critical to your business.

Different industries have different software needs. For example, a retail business may need a point-of-sale system, while a healthcare provider may need electronic health records software. Understanding the software needs of your specific industry can help you identify the solutions that are most relevant to your business.

Software solutions can vary greatly in cost, from free open-source software to enterprise-level software with a significant price tag. Determining your budget for software will help you narrow down your options and focus on solutions that are within your financial means.

Once you have identified your business needs, considered your industry, and determined your budget, it’s time to research available software options. Look for software solutions that meet your specific needs and are within your budget. Consider reading reviews and case studies to learn more about how other businesses in your industry are using software. If none fit the bill then perhaps bespoke software development is the way forward.

When evaluating software options, it’s essential to consider the features and functionality that each solution offers. Look for software that has the features you need to improve your business processes and streamline operations. Consider whether the software integrates with your existing systems and whether it is user-friendly for your employees.

Implementing new software can be a significant undertaking for any business, and it’s essential to consider the technical support and training that will be available. Look for software providers that offer comprehensive training and support to ensure that your employees can use the software effectively and efficiently.

As your business grows and evolves, so will your software needs. When evaluating software options, consider whether the solution can scale with your business. Look for software that can accommodate your future needs and can be easily customized to meet your changing requirements.

Data security is a critical concern for any business. When evaluating software options, consider the security and data protection measures that are in place. Look for software that offers encryption, two-factor authentication, and other security features to protect your sensitive data.

In today’s digital landscape, most businesses use multiple software systems to manage their operations. When evaluating software options, consider whether the solution can integrate with your existing systems. Look for software that offers APIs or other integration options to ensure that your data can flow seamlessly between systems.

Finally, it’s important to get feedback from your employees when evaluating software options. Your employees are the ones who will be using the software on a daily basis, and their input can be invaluable in determining which solution is the best fit for your business. Consider conducting a survey or focus group to get feedback from your employees on their software needs and preferences.

The post How to Identify Software Needs for your Business appeared first on The Total Entrepreneurs.

With the Internet and technology, businesses are equipped with various applications, systems, and programs to help them with everything from communication to accounting to finance to management. Employees are able to work efficiently with smartphones, laptops, and desktop computers in the business world. Mobile applications have become an integral part of business software, and many companies are successful because of them.

Every industry has been affected, and it has led to a more efficient and seamless operation. In addition to enterprise apps, there are robotics and AI-based software applications that automate several essential processes in ways that are tailored to the needs of every company. They all make businesses run more smoothly, although they may be expensive. Therefore, they are well worth the investment.

Below are some of the technologies you must consider. The only prerequisite for these is a reliable internet connection. You can go for Spectrum if you are looking for any suggestions. The prices are pretty affordable, and the Spectrum Customer Service is equally amazing.

Now you can use an app as a credit card reader, cutting down on the time spent on physical invoices or using a register. The days of carrying cash or keeping physical binders of invoices and transactions are over. It is also possible to send digital receipts to your clients. Furthermore, it can take care of inventory tracking, sales history, and printing out digital discounts for your customers. It simplifies processes and procedures greatly, making them much easier to handle.

System programs like this automate everything and have been a key to the success of many companies since their conception. In addition to searching for records, analyzing, calculating, writing queries, setting up transactions, and many other tasks, RPA is equipped with AI capabilities. New technologies can help automate repetitive and redundant tasks, giving your employees a chance to focus on more important matters and become more productive by completing them all more quickly and efficiently.

Have you ever experienced a bad phone connection? This isn’t a problem with a communication app. The application has a chat interface with options for uploading and communication, and it also has a call button. In addition, it has a search option that allows you to search for individual posts or uploads. No more browsing through different emails for what you’re looking for. Different departments or projects can be grouped according to the number of departments or projects you have at any given time in your company. The system is also quite intuitive and user-friendly.

Adding noise-canceling software to your PC makes your online communication that much more effective and professional, so that all distracting background noises and echoes are kept out. It is compatible with any communication app and works in both directions so it can remove the noise on both your side as well as the other speaking party’s side.

Documents are submitted and handed in using this shared computing infrastructure. Documents that employees need to keep track of, such as time cards, expense reports, requests for information (RFIs), work records, etc., can be added to the system. By automating all data entry and organizing important files accordingly, you can save yourself and your business a great deal of time each year. An internet connection or Wi-Fi connection is all that is needed to access everything, and that can take place either on a secure network or within a log management solution (such as this one from Logit.io).

Many companies today rely on timesheet application software. Keeping track of everything related to your employees is vital for understanding the various reports that come in. The templates you use will allow you to track everything and know when things took place. You will be able to get all the necessary information about your employees on the most accurate and correct timeframe, whether you want to know their working hours, personal requests, when they clock in and out, their accurate pay, staff on leaves of absence, receipts, approvals by the responsible staff, mileage expenses, or any other useful information.

Finance and accounting apps are also useful for businesses. In addition to payroll services, company taxes, and employee onboarding forms, they also provide other support services. With these handy applications, you can email digital pay stubs to your employees. You can easily file tax forms, automatically deduct all employee benefits, and see when each employee is going to receive their paychecks. A lot of the tedious paperwork processes become easier to manage when you use the app.

Conclusion

Using technology to the fullest extent possible would be prudent for the growth and longevity of your company. No matter what changes you make to your app, program, or system, you’ll notice a noticeable difference in your business’ profits, exposure, and ranking. It’s therefore important for you to be the ultimate opportunist and integrate various technical tools that can help your business succeed.

The post Best Technology for Better Business Operations appeared first on The Total Entrepreneurs.

Small businesses tend to have limited resources, namely finances, staff, and time. Therefore, they need to make every effort count and avoid inefficient decisions or mistakes that can lead to setbacks. Small businesses must carefully weigh each approach’s potential benefits and drawbacks before committing to any strategy.

Because people spend 3 hours and 15 minutes daily on their phones on average, Short Message Service (SMS) and mobile marketing are two high-potential marketing strategies for small businesses to reach many customers with relatively low investments.

While both can be effective, they have different pros and cons you need to consider.

Text or SMS marketing involves sending promotional or informative text messages to mobile devices. It offers several advantages for small businesses looking to reach their target audience effectively and cost-efficiently.

Most people will likely see your texts because they’re constantly on their phones. SMS marketing enjoys a 98% open and 45% response rate. In terms of engagement, SMS blows email open rates out of the water, which sits at around 21%.

Your business can send texts to segmented contacts, allowing you to personalize the messages to better your customers’ experience. For example, including details such as purchase type or location can make the recipient feel like you’re speaking to them directly instead of as a faceless statistic.

Texts send almost instantly, making them excellent for time-sensitive messages or promotions. Additionally, you won’t need to worry about whether customers are connected to the internet since SMS doesn’t require Wi-Fi to work. These features make messages such as post-purchase follow-ups or event-based sales announcements perfect for the platform.

SMS marketing can be very cost-efficient, depending on how many messages you send. Most providers charge per message or offer subscription plans, making it easy for businesses to track their spending.

Due to the relatively simple format of SMS messages, marketers can apply automation technology easily. Small businesses can incorporate automation to optimize their marketing campaigns, from segmenting contact lists to generating text content.

While SMS marketing for startups and small businesses offers several advantages, there are also potential drawbacks that you should consider before implementing a campaign.

SMS messages are generally limited to 160 characters, so getting everything you want to say to the recipient can be challenging. However, you can partially circumvent this limitation by including a link to a website with more information. The character count limit can even inspire creativity, which may help your marketing effort.

SMS marketing usually uses lists like email marketing. If customers feel like you’re spamming them with promotional texts, they will likely opt out of receiving anything further. Too many customers opting out of your SMS marketing campaign can damage your business’ image and customer relationships.

SMS marketing is subject to regulations, so failure to comply can lead to fines and penalties. Study applicable laws on marketing practices before committing to an SMS marketing campaign to help you avoid costly legal concerns.

Ads today need to be flashy to stand out. Since SMS messages are limited to text, there’s no room for visual solutions to appeal to customers. This limitation can be an issue for businesses that rely on pictures or videos to display their products and services.

The results of your SMS marketing efforts may be challenging to track as you have no direct access to data. The best way to gather data would be to add the question, “How did you find out about us?” in a form, but it’s unlikely that all your customers will respond to a post-purchase follow-up.

Mobile marketing is a range of tactics and techniques designed to engage customers on their mobile devices—specifically smartphones and tablets. Popular examples are apps, websites, and push notifications. Mobile marketing offers small businesses various tools and channels to reach large audiences.

Because so many apps and websites are available, your ads and messages can target either extremely specific or vast audiences based on what you want. For example, ads on a niche app can appeal to a select group of people, while posts on more popular platforms can reach a wider audience.

Unlike text marketing, mobile ads can include images, videos, and animations, depending on the platform. These options can deliver your message more cleanly and efficiently than text alone. For example, a short demo video can do more to convince an interested watcher than a paragraph about your product’s features.

You can create campaigns that take advantage of the interactive nature of mobile devices. For example, interactive content and gamification can promote your brand better than straightforward text or images. Creative mobile ads that maximize the capabilities of a platform can leave lasting impressions on your audience.

You can market on multiple channels with mobile marketing—social media, applications, email, and text—increasing the likelihood of reaching existing and new audiences. You can incorporate some or all these platforms on one device, whether your customers’ phone or tablet.

Using notifications on your app or elsewhere can quickly engage with customers and notify them of time-sensitive information, much like texts. These notifications can work better as the recipient is already on an app related to your business and is more likely to notice.

Like any marketing approach, mobile marketing comes with disadvantages as well.

Given the need for specialized ads for each platform you choose, mobile marketing can be much more expensive to implement. For example, apps don’t share the same code base and ad format, so you have to tailor each ad for each app, requiring more time, effort, and money to adjust to the app’s unique requirements.

While many channels are available on mobile devices, each requires at least some knowledge about how it works to enable you to market through it effectively. This requirement can mean understanding the platform’s culture, audience, or technical skills like programming and app design, which takes time.

Unlike SMS and email marketing’s opt-in lists, mobile apps reach a broader audience that often doesn’t have a say in what they see. Intrusive, annoying, repetitive ads can potentially harm your business’ reputation.

Mobile is such a pervasive marketing platform that nearly every company wants a slice of user attention. Even the most niche websites and apps have businesses advertising to their users. Your marketing will need to outperform a lot of competition to secure a portion of mobile’s user base.

New platforms, technologies, and best practices emerge daily on mobile platforms. The landscape constantly moves and evolves, which can quickly invalidate or counteract your marketing efforts. This concern is particularly damaging for small businesses, which may not have the resources or staff to keep track of and adapt to these changes.

When it comes to choosing between SMS and mobile marketing, there are a few key factors that you should consider.

What are your marketing goals, and how can these channels help you achieve them? SMS marketing may be better suited for short-term, direct-response campaigns, while mobile marketing can be better for long-term brand building and engagement.

Who are you trying to reach with your marketing messages? SMS marketing can be more effective for existing customers. You can personalize their experience and retarget them to encourage them to buy again. On the other hand, mobile marketing has a broader reach and may be more effective if you’re looking for new buyers.

If your products are for mobile users in general, both methods can apply. However, specialized products and services may benefit from the targetability of mobile marketing more.

How much are you planning to invest in your marketing campaign? SMS marketing is cost-effective, which makes it more appealing to smaller businesses. On the other hand, mobile marketing campaigns tend to be more expensive, but they have a greater opportunity for massive returns if successful.

What internal and external resources do you have available to execute your campaigns? A smaller team with limited expertise may find SMS marketing more accessible. If you have access to technical experts, they can make accessing mobile markets easier for your company.

As the owner of a steadily growing small business, you have a lot of tough decisions to make. Many of them can boost or impede your growth. Choosing the right marketing channel is just one of many decisions you must make, but it can significantly impact your success.

With a better understanding of your options and carefully considering your goals, you can decide which marketing channel suits your needs and resources. It’s worth noting that these two are not mutually exclusive; businesses may find success in incorporating multiple approaches in tandem if they have the resources to do so.

The post The Pros and Cons of SMS Marketing and Mobile Marketing for Small Businesses appeared first on The Total Entrepreneurs.

As an investor, you need to have the right knowledge and tools available to you in order to monitor and maintain your portfolio performance. There are a number of challenges that investors face and many external factors influence the success or failure of a certain investment.

One of the most powerful tools for investors to use is backtesting. Backtesting your portfolio as an investor is a smart habit that helps you gather intel and data on the investments themselves. This allows you to make better-informed decisions that will hopefully enable your investments to flourish into something more substantial.

In a CFA Institute survey of almost 250 analysts, private wealth managers and portfolio managers, 50% of respondents reported conducting backtesting as an investment strategy within the past twelve months of the survey date.

If you decide to do backtesting on your portfolio, then it’s certainly something worth doing for the health and performance of any portfolios you manage. Whether it’s a personal portfolio or one of many you manage for clients, backtesting proves significantly effective.

This guide will share all you need to know about backtesting your portfolio and how it’s beneficial. We’ll also share some top tips on strengthening your portfolio(s).

Table of contents

Backtesting is a valuable and effective practice to assess the viability of a trading strategy through historical data. This tool that’s used in investment portfolios operates on the theory that any strategy which has worked well in the past, is likely to be effective in the future.

The same theory is played out and vice versa too. If the strategy was a poor one, producing mediocre results, then it’s likely to do the same again.

Traders and analysts, including those who manage portfolios, use this testing to analyze risk and profitability. They are able to make decisions based on this data before they invest any capital. Of course, it’s not always guaranteed to work, especially when working on the theory mentioned above.

However, for many portfolio managers and owners to be using backtesting, it seems appropriate to try it out for yourself, right?

As long as the backtesting is conducted successfully, it’ll provide positive results that give traders assurance about the strategy in question. Alternatively, if the strategy yields negative results, then the trader is able to decide whether to adjust or bin the strategy for something else.

If the trading idea is quantifiable then it’s possible to be backtested. Some traders may wish to work with programmers in order to make certain ideas testable when they’re not currently.

Why backtest your portfolio? Investments are risks that are often volatile and unpredictable. While that might be true, many investments rely on strategies to provide positive results. Backtesting these strategies is a way of screening the strategy in advance and highlighting any potential pitfalls or issues within them.

While it’s not 100% foolproof in its effectiveness, it is something that’s worth the extra effort to do. Here are 6 reasons to backtest your portfolio this year.

Within this digital age, it’s helped many traders and newcomers to invest, to begin investing, even on limited funds. The introduction of new investment types such as cryptocurrency, NFTs and peer-to-peer lending means investors need to sift out the good from the bad.

Automation has also become widely popular amongst traders now, with an automated trading platform being an attractive prospect for those who handle multiple portfolios at once. With backtesting, it provides the results that will help the trader, tweak and adjust their current investments appropriately.

While automated trading platforms are useful for streamlining and saving time, they still need monitoring. The use of historical data to understand where investment may be heading or how much risk is attached to it, helps traders set the relevant parameters within these automated platforms.

That way, they’re helping mitigate the risk of their capital as best as possible.

Backtesting is useful for investors because it helps understand the behavior of an investment in relation to key events in financial history. For example, the pandemic caused a lot of panic among investors due to the uncertainty it caused.

According to one source, the outbreak of COVID-19 caused 28% of investors from around the world, to move a significant proportion of their portfolios to lower-risk investments.

These financial crisis events, whether they’re localized or global, do impact the behavior of an investor. Using this historical data helps investors understand their strategy’s behavior during these negative financial events. As a result, they’ll know how much they’re expected to lose roughly.

As an investor, the amount of risk that’s attached to a certain strategy and asset will determine whether they choose to go ahead with it or not. For some portfolio managers, they may have clients who have been specific about how many high-risk or low-risk assets they want to invest in.

The use of backtesting helps to determine how much risk there is within the strategy itself. That’s helpful for the trader to have more intel on whether it’s a viable opportunity or not. Of course, every investor is different in their approach and needs for the portfolio.

For older investors, high-risk assets might not be appropriate at this time when those individuals may be close to cashing in. Younger investors may wish to take on more risky strategies because they have time to bounce back should it fail.

In one particular statistical analysis, the researcher found that diversified investments produce higher returns and face lower risks.

Utilizing historical data through backtesting helps the portfolio manager or trader to understand what assets pose the most risk and which ones pose a lot less. Diversifying a portfolio is a great way to help spread all your eggs across multiple baskets. It’s a common attitude that putting all your eggs in one basket, is risky – and that’s true.

Even those assets with a slight degree of risk could result in a loss of capital. Whether it’s a personal portfolio or one being managed, losing capital is something you want to avoid. Backtesting is a method that is preventative in its efforts for investors making those investments.

Confidence in your portfolio and how you manage your portfolio is essential. Sometimes you need to be willing to take that risk in order to reap the benefits. However, backtesting provides the backbone that investors need to take that leap of faith. At least with the use of historical data, they’ll be going into the investment with a bit more awareness of what to expect.

With more data and insight into a strategy’s potential risk, traders and portfolio managers are able to move forward with more confidence than they would have had prior to backtesting.

If you’ve been sleeping on data, then chances are, you’re not getting the full picture when investing. As an investor, data is helpful to understand what has happened in the past, what’s occurring now, and what could potentially transpire in the future.

Backtesting is a useful practice to implement, especially as it relies on historical data to help predict how a strategy could perform in the future. While it doesn’t always work, it’s better to have some form of data to make decisions upon, rather than basing your investment decisions on assumption.

If you’re looking to strengthen your portfolio, then there are some general tips that will help give it the best chance of success. Of course, none of these methods are guaranteed to provide results but they may help turn some of those losses into the occasional wins.

Arrogance is going to risk you slipping up on your investments. Make sure to stay humble and always look out for opportunities to diversify your client’s portfolio – or yours if it’s a personal one.

Be sure to mix your investments up with a variety of high and low-risk assets and switch your attitude on failed investments. Every failure is an opportunity for success. Improving your knowledge of investments is only going to benefit your efforts further in the future.

Despite it not being fully truthful in the results it provides, backtesting is worth trying for portfolios, whether they’re a year old or several years old. If there’s one improvement you make upon your asset choices in this era, it’s to conduct backtesting to make more insightful decisions on which assets you decide to invest in.

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Companies across all markets and sectors face a similar challenge. They all need to break down their profit margins into comprehensive data and use it to make informed decisions about the future of their business. It doesn’t get much more fundamental than that.

Without a clear understanding of gross profit margins and the data that these margins consist of, managing a sustainable business model is nearly impossible.

The world is becoming increasingly data-driven, making those quintessential ones and zeros more indispensable to business operations than ever before. By using gross profit margin data to drive business decisions, you can enhance productivity and maintain a position of competitive advantage.

In simple terms, the gross profit margin is whatever profit that is left over once you’ve paid for the direct costs of running your business. It’s a crucial metric to track because it tells you how successfully your management cohort is generating revenue.

The higher your gross profit margin is, the more effective your profit-generating strategy is. It’s a clear indicator of your business’s health and level of future sustainability.

You can use gross profit margin to inform other aspects of business, too, such as:

All in all, gross profit margin is an extremely important metric to follow if you’re running a business no matter what kind. And the best way to keep track of it is to utilize data-driven decision-making.

Data-driven decision-making (also known as DDDM) refers to the process of harvesting data from your business’s key performance indicators (KPIs) and transforming them into actionable insights. This allows you to take the raw data and turn it into more practical, usable information.

While making gut-based decisions is also important in a professional setting, data-driven decisions are the kind you can rely on to be consistent every time. When it comes to meeting goals and monitoring metrics, data-driven decision-making is the way to go.

DDDM is also the most useful way to go about tracking important metrics like gross profit margin. And without a way to track this crucial metric, other metrics become harder to monitor.

Data makes the modern world go round. We need it to break down large amounts of complex information into smaller, more comprehensible chunks that provide insight into market behavior and facilitate better productivity. Here are some other reasons why DDDM is so essential today:

Knowledge is power, and data is knowledge. Therefore, the more streamlined your data-collecting system and analysis, the more efficient and informed your business. And the easier it is to make long-term decisions based on solid know-how.

There are many ways to utilize the power of DDDM.

Gaining a better understanding of gross profit margin will help you to manage your business in a more efficient and informed way. But how do you accomplish that? Here are several effective ways to use gross profit margins and DDDM to streamline business operations:

Before you can start using your data to inform business decisions, you need to know where it’s coming from and which sources you can rely on most.

Establishing your various data sources is an important step for making sense of raw data. Some of the most commonly recognized data sources include:

Establishing your data sources will help you determine which ones to focus on, both now and in the future. Select the avenues most relevant to your business and use what you find through them to inform your decisions moving forward.

Data collection and tracking needs to be an organized affair. You will need tools and software programs to not only make sense of them but also to prevent confusion.

Fortunately, there are plenty of high-grade data-tracking platforms, tools, and devices you can use to organize your approach to data-tracking, most of which you can readily find online.

These tools are designed to not only organize your data but also to store it in a secure location and provide you with a wide variety of automation tools that make data analysis easy and efficient. These tools are absolutely essential for large-scale data tracking in a contemporary business environment.

Once you have identified your main sources of data and developed a system to help you track them, it’s time to start practicing formal data analysis. This should be a continuous and consistent process that you do over time in order to yield the best results.

Some of the most important areas of data analysis to track include the following items:

Being consistent about data analysis is one of the most important processes you can implement as a business. Without a consistent approach to gathering data, you won’t get an accurate enough picture of the trends and patterns you are trying to capture.

The last step in the process of making data-driven decisions is to use the data you collect to draw realistic conclusions. For instance, if your gross profit margin data indicates that profit has been low for the past two months, conclude that there is an issue that needs to be addressed.

From there, you can use the available data to work backwards and assess where the issue lies and what you can realistically do to change it. It may be an internal factor or an external one, and by examining the data you can pinpoint the root cause. Use every bit of data you capture as a tool to continually work on and improve your business model and your marketing—that’s what it’s there for.

Aside from the fact that data is inextricably intertwined with the way businesses operate today, there are a plethora of great reasons to refine your data-tracking system. Here are five of them:

Bias can be dangerous, largely because we often allow it to guide our decisions without realizing it. When you use hard data instead of instinct to inform your decisions, you remove the potential for internal bias to fog up your strategy or even set you on an entirely erroneous course.

When you’re using unbiased data to help shape your business strategy, you can act more confidently. Data is impartial and objective, taking nothing but the cold, hard facts and showing real patterns of behavior, nothing more.

This allows businesspeople to become more decisive and confident leaders, making decisions without wondering whether they are misinformed or not.

Running a business is a bit like raising a child. There are so many changes and growing pains happening all at once, it can be difficult to keep track of what is working and what isn’t. There will always be a new problem or challenge to deal with, but data can help you uncover them sooner rather than later.

Instead of trying to predict what problems will develop in future on your own, you can turn to data to visualize potential issues before your human eye can spot them.

The more informed your business is about its various trends and profit margins, the more realistically it can set its future goals. Accurate data analysis helps you cultivate a clearer picture of current operations, enabling you to set goals that are realistically achievable rather than hopeful ideations.

If you know how to calculate profit margin you’re on the right track to making data-driven decisions that will benefit your business.

Whether you’re tracking gross profits or customer behavior, data is the key to unlocking a deeper understanding of the business you run. Gross profit margin is one of the sharpest indicators you have access to for understanding business health, so use it as the compass it can be.

With a plan in place to navigate your business’s operational data, you can not only improve gross profit margins, but also boost productivity, optimize management, and improve general productivity.

The post How to Use Gross Profit Margin to Make Data-Driven Decisions for Your Business appeared first on The Total Entrepreneurs.

Let’s face it: there is no way to perfectly organize a business, a home, a garage or a 4-year-old’s bedroom. As long as spaces are used in some fashion, they will become unorganized to a certain degree. However, there is hope for those of us who garner enormous pleasure from sorting and filing on a professional basis. There are surprising ways to perfect your own professional organizing business. Read on to discover just how close to perfection your professional organizing business can become.

First Things First.

If you are in the process of starting your own professional organizing business, there are some initial steps to put into place (And, don’t you love putting steps into place?). To begin, you’ll want to establish your business as a valid business and not merely a hobby. To do so, determine the legal entity of your business, open a business bank account, register your business with the state in which you live, obtain the proper insurance, and fill out the forms to secure a business license. If you do not have a business plan, use this comprehensive guide, how to start an organizing business to establish your mission, objectives, strategies, resources, and other crucial information. File everything in the proper place and then move on to discover how you can successfully scale and grow your professional organizing business.

In the professional organizing industry, you’ll want to create a brand that represents you and your services. The brand will contain colors, designs, a tagline, and a logo that are all memorable. You’ll then want to apply that brand to every part of your business, including your apparel, your business documents, your office design, and every component that creates the recognition of who you are and the professional organizing services you can provide.

To begin a strategic approach toward marketing, compile a demographic picture of who your customers could be and what they will possibly want from your professional organizing business. For example, is your customer an executive who doesn’t have time to organize the office? Or, is the customer in great need of organizing several rooms within a home? Answering these questions will allow you to aim your strategies directly at your target market. From there, you’ll want to start building marketing strategies to see which garner the most attention, drive new business and entice former customers to return. The following are proven ways to attract and keep the customers of an organizing business:

Generate leads via personalized attention to obvious areas of need. Now, I’m not suggesting you will call attention to a mess inside someone’s home. However, with small, practiced comments during many conversations, you can bring your capabilities to the attention of potential customers. Also known as “word-of-mouth,” this strategy relies on the proven track record of those who utilize professional organizers, in that they do not want to sort or organize their own professional or personal items. The word-of-mouth method of marketing can be extremely rewarding in the professional organizing industry, as referrals are highly-regarded and the results of organization are visually appealing.

Within the social media world, there is almost no better post than one that indicates a “before” and “after” set of photos. Using Facebook or Instagram, post photos of organizing triumphs at least 2-3 times per week. The dramatic improvements displayed will generate a high degree of interest and questions from intrigued consumers.

If your website is a bit bland or less-than-inviting, this is the time to rebuild it by unwrapping your new brand identity, which can now be deeply embedded within the site. Everything about your website should scream “beautiful organization” and bring the audience to your door. This is an excellent time to start a blog about organizing and sharing interesting tips and tricks for readers.

No, this isn’t directed to your personal relationships, thankfully. This is a call out to focus on the relationships you already have with former and current clients. Although it’s easy to look past these clients; organizing is one service that calls for more. If one office is organized, it brings attention to the other disorganized offices, for example. For this reason, you’ll want to consider marketing your services on a regular basis to former and current clients. 

As the owner of a professional organizing business, there are a variety of ways in which you can perfect your marketing strategies and business functions. The value of your organizational skills will always be of interest to others and new business will always be ready to explore as you build your business for long-term growth and success.

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A business can be described as an enterprising entity or organization that comes in different types and operates in various industries such as finance, retail, manufacturing, and technology.

Producing, acquiring, selling, or trading goods and services is what it entails. Businesses are typically structured in a hierarchical or bureaucratic manner. There can be different types of businesses depending on various factors. Small businesses are organizations that operate on a local or regional level independently. Locally building a small business’s brand awareness can be difficult, but there are some expert tips that can make the process easier to handle and more successful.

Starting a business is not a small task; you should focus on every aspect of improving and running it. Brand awareness is also an aspect of any business’s success. It enables them to stand out in a market and win the confidence and unwavering support of their clients. It is also simply a marketing concept that describes how well prospective customers recognize a product or service. To generate leads such as by using social media advertising, email marketing and so on can also be responsible for creating brand awareness for small businesses. These strategies emphasize customers to recognize your brand and increase brand awareness locally.

Small businesses can increase brand awareness by focusing on the details and using the internet without spending a lot of money on a marketing campaign. You may want to know how. Let’s talk about some local brand awareness strategies for small businesses:

To ensure that people receive a simple and easy-to-understand message about your company and the goods and services you provide, your logo, website, and social media platforms should all clearly convey the message. It is very much necessary to avoid using convoluted language or technical jargon that your customers are unfamiliar with since they should be knowledgeable about your company. Your business should look consistent, which will help build brand recognition. You should focus on unique ways of selling propositions, which will set you apart from your other competitors. Also, you should make sure that you are using high-quality images, graphics, and videos that lead to conveying your brand personality, as this can be a powerful tool for communicating your brand’s message.

In this generation, social media is the most popular platform and cost-effective way to create brand awareness. Technologies play a vital role in branding your business. No one can deny the fact that it can be a perfect place to brand your business, as most people are on social media nowadays. Social media platforms are used in social marketing, which is the process of promoting and advertising goods and services to a target market. Young people mostly focus on platforms like TikTok and Instagram, while Facebook might be a better option for older people. Start by choosing the right platforms, optimizing your profiles, posting consistently, engaging with followers, using local hashtags, collaborating with local businesses, and leveraging paid advertising. Interact with your customers on social media and encourage engagement with fun contests and different giveaway ideas. It is very much effective to focus more on quality than quantity. Make sure to be engaged with followers, responding to comments and messages, and asking for feedback and input from the audience. Social media advertising can be an effective and targeted approach for creating brand awareness.

Blogging can also be an effective method to create brand awareness locally. Try to create not only interesting but relevant and shareable content that you think people are likely to share with others. You should concentrate on producing high-quality content that gives readers helpful information rather than producing low-quality content. Those contents are responsible for generating more website traffic. Consider your target audience’s interests, questions and points when writing content using relevant keywords. You may develop a loyal audience and establish yourself as a thought leader in your business by continuously creating fascinating, pertinent, and shareable material.

Also read: How to Create Blog Posts That Coverts Website Visitors Into Paying Customers

Every business depends on its customers, so they are considered the lifeblood of any business. They are the reason businesses exist, therefore, it is important to pay attention to your customers, providing them with excellent customer service.

To build strong relationships with customers and to increase your business visibility and reputation you should encourage customers to review and give feedback, engage with customers on social media offering, offering promotions and incentives. You should make your tone friendly, considerate and clear. Offer promotions and incentives to customers to create brand awareness and attract new customers like offering a discount to a first-time customer or a free product or service for referring a friend.

Try to get more positive reviews and ranking from the customers. The age-old belief that “the customer is always right” still holds true in today’s business world.

As we all know today’s generation focuses more on social platforms than the real world, influencers have a significant impact on customers’ behavior and trends and can influence the purchasing decision of followers. They are individuals who have built a strong following on social media platforms such as Instagram, YouTube and TikTok, which are also the main platforms where you can create brand awareness for your business. You should find the influencer that matches your target audience, engage with them and reach out to a purpose collaboration clearing out the terms you want and what you offer in return. Influencers can help to create brand awareness for your small business by making use of their authority and influence in society. They can create engaging content that showcases your band and products and share this content on different platforms.

To effectively build brand awareness for your small business locally, consider forming partnerships with other small businesses. It may be a brilliant way to market your company and attract new clients. Start by looking for companies that provide goods or services that are complementary to your own. Try to find a business similar to yours so that you can team up and host an event together. Make sure to identify mutual objectives and collaborate to develop a marketing strategy that is beneficial to both firms. You can reach more customers and raise brand awareness by combining your audiences. Agencies like SEO Stairs are there to help you in promoting your brand more precisely. Strategic alliances can benefit both companies, promoting growth and opening up new possibilities.

Who doesn’t like free products? Using promotional products can be a great way to increase brand recognition and draw attention to your company. Choose Products that are relevant to your business and your target audience. Invest in high-quality products such as pens, t-shirts or other items with your logo and clear message. These items can be included in shipments, local events or can be given as giveaway contest prizes. It can be a suitable and affordable way to promote the brand. Participation in local events, leveraging email marketing, use of local are some major strategies that help to boost your brand awareness locally. These types of marketing efforts are responsible for building brand awareness in small businesses.

Conclusion

Creating brand awareness for your small business locally is crucial to building a loyal customer base and ultimately increasing sales. To successfully increase brand awareness within your community, a mix of offline and online marketing techniques is needed. Business ideas of higher thinking are very much necessary. Blog posts, videos, infographics, social media posts, etc are some pieces of content that are effective ways for creating brand awareness. Building brand awareness takes time and effort, but by consistently showcasing your unique value proposition through a combination of online and offline marketing strategies, you can establish your business as a trusted and recognizable presence in your local market.

The post How to Create Brand Awareness for Your Small Businesses Locally appeared first on The Total Entrepreneurs.

Angel investor, business mentor and professional speaker Mark Lyttleton supports founders of early-stage companies, providing not just professional insights but also personal advice, helping entrepreneurs to negotiate the challenges and stresses involved in establishing and growing their businesses. This article will outline the skills and mentality required to build a successful business.

Successful entrepreneurship requires founders to forge their own paths. Rather than relying on luck, business leaders have to be persistent, finding an audience to serve by learning their market inside out and keeping a keen lookout for potential challenges and opportunities.

In terms of the key to successful entrepreneurship, there is no single cookie-cutter answer that applies universally to all. However, inexperienced founders can stack the odds in their favour by following a few simple rules.

A major stumbling block for many entrepreneurs is the reluctance to relinquish control over certain aspects of their business, with the entrepreneur trying to do it all by themselves. However, it is crucial for business leaders to adopt a realistic attitude, identifying their own strengths and weaknesses and delegating tasks that could better be fulfilled by others. This frees up entrepreneurs to concentrate on the aspects of running their business that they bring the most value to.

Sometimes, it takes the entrepreneur to come to the point where they feel completely overwhelmed before they fully appreciate the importance of effective delegation. Taking on employees is a long-term commitment – it is a decision not to be rushed into or taken lightly. However, thanks to the gig economy, there is an abundance of freelancers and contractors that entrepreneurs can turn to today.

Richard Branson left school at 16 and started selling a student magazine. When that enterprise hit the buffers, he set up a mail-order music business with a phone box as his office, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Fear of failure can quickly lead to inertia, a state that can often be the kiss of death for any early-stage business. Not every business succeeds, and the occasional failure is par for the course for many business leaders. Indeed, some wear it as a badge of honour. Perhaps the concept was just not right, the market climate was wrong or the competition turned out to be tougher than anticipated. Sometimes, completely unforeseeable situations arise, ruining an entrepreneur’s momentum. However, it is crucial for founders to take calculated risks in establishing and growing their businesses.

Many people associate entrepreneurship with burning the midnight oil: the founder working 18-hour days, eating, sleeping and breathing their business, with little time left for anything else. However, in reality, it is essential for business leaders to strike the right work-life balance, otherwise, they leave themselves exposed to the very real risk of burnout.

Working every minute of every day is simply not enough to ensure an entrepreneur of success. In fact, in all likelihood, such an approach may well be a form of self-sabotage. Overwork leads to fatigue. Fatigue leads to mistakes, which could prove very costly for an entrepreneur in the process of building their business. It is therefore vital to strike the right balance, with business leaders investing in their own personal well-being to help them stay on top of their game.

The post Mark Lyttleton: How to Be an Effective Entrepreneur appeared first on The Total Entrepreneurs.

Cryptocurrencies are a relatively novel invention and as with anything new that comes out we need to relearn safety and how to keep ourselves out of harm’s way and avoid scammers or anything similar that could separate us from our hard-earned funds, in this case, cryptocurrency. Safety can sometimes get complicated when it comes to technology so we’ll be doing our best to cover the most important ones while simplifying them enough so that you can figure them out even with minimal knowledge of how cryptocurrencies work. Safety is of the utmost importance so let’s dive straight into it.

One of the main things you need to do is keep your passwords and private keys safe. Unless the circumstances are extreme there are very few reasons to ever give your passwords or private keys to someone else. Even if you trust that they won’t use them maliciously there is no guarantee that they themselves won’t be scammed down the line, losing your key/password even though they had no plan to give it up or any malicious intent at all. 

Making sure that your passwords are strong and hard to guess is also important. You should avoid using easily guessable sequences of numbers or letters. This prevents people from using brute force (systematic guessing with a program) to get your password. Another thing you should avoid is using any private info in your password that’s related to you as then they could figure it out and use it to guess your passwords. Examples would be birthdays or anniversaries, or even names of loved ones.

You can view your crypto wallet as a sort of vault that holds all of your currency. It’s important that you invest in your vault to make sure that it can protect your valuables and that you can have some peace of mind knowing that it’s extremely secure. There are various online wallets available with varying qualities, but we personally recommend getting either a desktop or hardware wallet depending on how serious you intend on being with crypto trading.

If you aren’t trading large amounts then a desktop wallet should suffice. As the name implies it sits on your PC and the cryptocurrency is stored there, this means that someone would need to gain access not only to your password and private key but also to the device itself. A more secure version of this is a hardware wallet, which you can imagine as a hard drive containing your currency. It’s easier to keep out of harm’s way as it can be kept offline and safe from most thieves. But you shouldn’t lose it.

Most exchanges and many other apps allow the option of two-factor authentication. In essence, this means that after inputting your password correctly you also need to input a code that is constantly changing and can only be viewed from your mobile device. This makes it so that nobody can take your cryptocurrency or affect it in any way if they haven’t also obtained your phone, meaning you can rest easy as long as you have it nearby.

One of the most powerful things you can have against scammers and thieves is knowledge. If you’re informed of all the latest news and what scams are popular in recent times then the chance that you will be fooled by someone is far lower. Knowledge truly is power so make sure that you read up on everything from regular IT to altcoin news as any information related to cryptocurrencies that you read up on and learn will help not only with your safety but trading in general too.

It’s also pretty hard to be a successful trader if you aren’t well-informed so you have many reasons to read up on everything that’s going on and very few not to so checking in on what’s happening in the world, both in general and crypto-wise is incredibly important and we highly recommend it.

While keeping yourself and your cryptocurrencies safe may seem difficult to do given how new all of this is, these tips should be a good starting point and make sure that you’re at least safe from the most basic of thieves and scammers.

The post Safety Tips for Investing in Cryptocurrencies appeared first on The Total Entrepreneurs.

For women entrepreneurs, it’s not just about working harder or better than the competition. It's about utilizing technology and tools that can help you work more effectively and efficiently. New technology in the digital world can empower you to build your business, no matter the industry. For business owners, knowing what type of technology to use can be a challenge, though. Where should you get started?

Below are some of the options in new technology for the digital world for women entrepreneurs.

Juggling numerous tasks, assignments, and projects is a good sign. It means your business is working and potentially growing. Yet, dropping the ball, perhaps due to a late assignment or a missed call, can tarnish your brand among current and potential clients. Project management tools can help with this by providing a digital way to always stay on top of your business.

Numerous project management tools are available, including some customized for specific industries or types of projects. Here are the top three options in both up-and-coming and proven project management systems.

Monday.com is an expandable project management tool with plenty of flexibility for customization. Project data, along with various reports and visualization tools, enables easy management of multi-step projects. It offers:

•             An easy-to-use interface

•             Plenty of configuration options to meet your business methods

•             Lots of marketing and CRM integrations

Trello uses Kanban boards that tend to work well for highly visual people. It’s easy to learn and customizable for most businesses. Trello does a great job with its numerous template options, too. Some key features include:

•             A free plan that provides up to 250 automated comments each month

•             Lots of integrations, including Slack and Google Drive

•             Quick set-up with drag-and-drop design

For startups looking for a cost-effective solution, ClickUp is an excellent choice. It provides numerous collaborative documents, whiteboard tools, and in-app chat features. It also can integrate with Dropbox, G Suite, Slack, and much more. You might choose ClickUp because of it:

•             Works well for different-sized teams

•             Makes workflow customization simple and effective

•             Lets you track and visualize project data

Accounting management is often a difficult part of managing new businesses. For women entrepreneurs who want to stay on top of their financials, there are some excellent technology options out there to support your success. Here are three proven and up-and-coming options.

For the most affordable business accounting software, consider FreshBooks. It provides a wide range of tools, including customizations to fit the way your business operates. Some key features include:

•             Comprehensive cloud-based accounting solutions

•             Excellent cash management tools

•             Easy-to-use visual dashboards for “seeing” where your money is going

A newer option, Sage is an excellent choice for small businesses that want to enhance their automation. It provides full business application and enterprise resource planning resources in one. In new technology in accounting, hyper-automation is key, and Sage does it well. Key features include:

•             Automatic reconciliation tools, finance tracking, and cash flow forecasting

•             Straightforward purchase invoice management 

•             Cloud-based functionality with real-time banking integration

Another newer company, Wave Accounting, is an excellent free tool with the ability to add payroll processing and payment solutions. It’s excellent for small businesses that want fast and efficient functionality without a lot of slowdowns. Key features include:

•             Recurring billing with automation

•             Unlimited partners and collaborator additions possible

•             A fully cloud-based dashboard

Today's business owners have a significant amount of digital media to manage. Connecting with customers online, managing visuals, and creating engaging marketing platforms require some of the best modern technology. For your business, consider these specific digital media management platforms streamlining business efforts.

Brandfolder makes managing digital assets easy, helping you grow your business in a more streamlined manner. This digital asset management platform can help your business build your brand quickly and across all platforms with features such as:

•             Cloud-based storage to handle all forms of digital assets

•             Automatic asset tagging and organization

•             Analytics about who uses content and how

For social media management, Buffer offers a streamlined, affordable solution that can benefit most of today’s businesses, including those looking to rebrand. It provides ample support to get users started, and the tools are innovative and even some of the most cutting-edge. Key features include:

•             A full suite of features for engagement, publishing, landing pages, and posts

•             Excellent customer support to help clients stay up-to-date on the newest innovations

•             Analytical tools that provide insight into how any solution works

Sprout Social is a blend of customer relationship management and social media management, a unique combination of two essential tools for the digital world. It’s simple to learn but often upgraded to incorporate new tools and solutions. Some core benefits include:

•             Scalability that enhances growth opportunities

•             Post monitoring and scheduling

•             Analytic tools that provide insight into the best campaigns

These new technologies for the digital world allow businesses to take their business online, connect with new customers, and deliver efficiencies, including in financial management. From proven to newer solutions, these companies do it best because they offer the latest innovations in the industry that all women entrepreneurs can benefit from for most types of businesses.

Author: Krista Murphy, MLZ Creative

Supporting the entrepreneurs in our community means recognizing the amazing work women are doing and celebrating their successes. This past month, Alberta Women Entrepreneurs had the pleasure of honoring four outstanding Alberta women for their dedication and commitment to the Alberta business community at the 2022 AWE Awards.

Above (left to right): Jewel Buksa, Jennifer Schaeffer, Breanne Everett, Vanessa Marshall, Marcela Mandeville.

Celebration of Achievement Award

Awarded to an exceptional female entrepreneur who has achieved recognizable success and acts as a role model for women in business. This visionary woman is an inspirational leader who has built an entrepreneurial venture in Alberta that has made a significant impact on the economy and the community.

Recipient: Manjit Minhas, Minhas Breweries, Distilleries and Winery

Over 20 years ago, when she was 19, Manjit and her brother Ravinder set out to make a spirit that they could sell in local liquor stores. In just a short time, that idea snowballed into over 90 brands. Now, Manjit is the founder and owner of Minhas Distillery, Minhas Brewery, and Minhas Winery, earning her enough of a reputation to take a role as an investor on Dragon’s Den. Manjit is a true example of the vigour and vision that Alberta women entrepreneurs have in creating successful and long-lasting businesses on the global stage. Though she has faced challenges throughout her career, she reminds other entrepreneurs: failure is not the opposite of success; it’s a part of success.

Emerging Entrepreneur Award

Awarded to a female entrepreneur who has built a strong, scalable business foundation and has achieved early success.

Recipient: Jennifer Schaeffer, Onlea Enterprises

Onlea is more than an online learning platform; it’s a commitment to accessible, masterful, and quality education that helps their clients grow. From the opioid crisis to the proper use of pronouns, this empathy-led team is creating meaningful content while revolutionizing what it means to learn online. Jennifer focuses on combining different learning styles with gaming techniques, graphic design, and film to produce content that’s engaging. Her business recently launched a research and development project that will utilize artificial intelligence to further individualize the learning experience.

Indigenous Entrepreneur Award

 Awarded to a leading Indigenous woman entrepreneur with a strong business concept and demonstrates plans for future growth and commitment to the community.

 Recipient: Vanessa Marshall, Jack59 Inc.

Spurred by a desire to spend more time with her daughter, Vanessa founded Jack59, a company specializing in hair care. But Jack59 products are far from your average shampoo and conditioners. Built on the idea that small changes can have a big impact, all of the products are made with the goal of reducing single-use plastic consumption and global water transport. Vanessa is helping create self-aware consumers while providing a business environment that allows her staff with flexible working hours so they can prioritize their family, just like she did.

Upsurge Entrepreneur Award

Awarded to a female entrepreneur who has built a solid foundation for her business and is now experiencing rapid growth.

Recipient: Breanne Everett, Orpyx Medical Technologies Inc.

Though she loved working as a clinician, Breanne recognized that Orpyx would allow her to have a greater impact on the diabetes community. Rather than offering care for patients who were suffering from limb loss, she wanted to create an innovative technology that could help prevent it from happening in the first place. Now her team works with two centres of excellence across the province in order to ensure that people living with diabetes can maintain their mobility, something that will change lives for thousands of individuals. And Breanne is just getting started when it comes to her insole technology, believing that in the future it could be used for all kinds of movement-related situations.

Since 2012, the annual AWE Awards have recognized more than 1000 women entrepreneurs in Alberta as award nominees. This year’s recipients join a prestigious list of Alberta entrepreneurs who are making a difference in their communities and around the world. Special thanks to our Presenting Sponsor, ATB Financial!

AWE has worked with thousands of entrepreneurs through coaching, mentorship, leadership development, business advising, access to capital, and access to networks over the last 27 years.

To learn more about the AWE Awards, please visit https://www.awebusiness.com/2022-awards-celebration

EDMONTON, AB – A group of ten extraordinary Alberta women entrepreneurs were named this year’s AWE Awards finalists.

“These finalists represent incredible possibility, remarkable innovation, and undeniable talent,”  says Marcela Mandeville, CEO, Alberta Women Entrepreneurs. “They are moving their businesses and our province forward.”

The awards, presented by ATB Financial, recognize the efforts of women entrepreneurs in four categories. This year’s finalists include:

Emerging Entrepreneur Award – Awarded to a female entrepreneur who has built a strong, scalable business foundation and has achieved early success.

Jennifer Schaeffer, Onlea Enterprises, Inc.

Shannon Van Norman, Shadow Vista Productions

Ashley Wevers, AdvancdAg Inc.

Carey Ann Thurlow, Risio Institute for Digital Dental Education Inc.

Indigenous Entrepreneur Award – Awarded to a leading Indigenous woman entrepreneur who has a strong business concept and demonstrates plans for future growth and commitment to the community.

Mallory Yawnghwe, Indigenous Box Inc.

Vanessa Marshall, Jack59 Inc.

Angie Saltman, Saltmedia Inc

Upsurge Award – Awarded to a female entrepreneur who has built a solid foundation for her business and is now experiencing rapid growth.

Breanne Everett, Orpyx Medical Technologies Inc.

Deanne Beis, Tenfold HR Solutions

Jenelle Wensley, Genex Marketing

Since 2012, the annual AWE Awards have recognized more than 800 women entrepreneurs in Alberta. Previous award winners include such notable Alberta entrepreneurs as Karina Birch of Rocky Mountain Soap Co., Karen Ryan and Lara Murphy of Ryan Murphy Construction, and Angela Santiago of The Little Potato Company.

Along with the awards, AWE has worked with thousands of entrepreneurs through coaching, mentorship, leadership development, business advising, access to capital, and access to networks over the last 25 years.

To learn more about the awards, visit: www.awebusiness.com/2022-awards-celebration . Get your ticket to the in-person Awards Celebration at the Edmonton Expo Center on September 13 on Eventbrite.

In today’s day and age, it’s nearly impossible to run a business that doesn’t include a digital component. Incorporating digital aspects to your business can look like so much more than just an online storefront. Many entrepreneurs may be missing out on huge opportunities to strengthen their business by not taking advantage of all technological possibilities.

That’s where Alberta Women Entrepreneurs’ BOLD Leadership program comes in.

Over the course of the program, entrepreneurs get a baseline of knowledge about what a digital transformation can look like for their business before creating a plan that fits their needs and abilities. “The Bold Leadership Program focuses on the critical components of building a digital strategy for a business.” Says Gabriela Touma; Bold Leadership Program Advisor. Covering a range of topics from digital marketing to improving the customer experience, the aim is of this program is to get participants thinking about all of the ways, big and small, that digitalization can save them time and money.

A lot of people feel overwhelmed because there is so much technology out there. AWE’s Bold Leadership program tries to give people enough of an idea of what the technologies are about and then how to start to incorporate that into their business.

Some entrepreneurs, like Danielle Cherewyk, focus on mapping out how to automate their business processes, saving their team dozens of hours a week. Others may focus on developing new revenue models so they can start scaling up. Beyond the tangible benefits that can come from putting new technologies into practice, the greatest win can be a shift in business culture.

We want to help leaders start creating a culture of innovation in their companies. Sometimes leaders will feel that all of the innovative ideas fall on them, but we help them build a framework so that they can actually draw on all the innovation and the talents in their team to help move the whole company forward.

“Within The Bold Leadership Program, business leaders will learn everything from how to build a digital strategy, how to effectively leverage current and emerging technologies, and how to understand the drivers of transformation, Touma says, but most importantly we are helping them navigate the digital space with other inspiring women leaders that are excited to learn, collaborate and add to the conversation.”

While teaching the skills is important, AWE recognizes that creating a network of support for businesses as they go through their digital transformation is what takes an idea from concept to execution. Participants have access to one-on-one time with expert digital advisors during and after the course so they can continue to receive advice that is relevant to their unique business.  

“The connections that happen in the program are remarkable. We’ve heard from many participants how much it has changed their businesses!”

MEDIA RELEASE

EDMONTON, AB –Alberta women entrepreneurs proved to be unstoppable in their efforts to better the world. Today, Alberta Women Entrepreneurs (AWE) is recognizing those efforts by naming nominees across four categories in its annual AWE Awards.

Awards Overview and Nominees

Emerging Entrepreneur Award – Awarded to an entrepreneur who has built a strong, scalable business foundation and has achieved early success.

Indigenous Entrepreneur Award – Awarded to a leading Indigenous entrepreneur who has a strong business, and demonstrates plans for future growth and commitment to the community.

Upsurge Award – Awarded to an entrepreneur who has built a solid foundation for her business and is now experiencing rapid growth.

Celebration of Achievement Award – Awarded to an exceptional entrepreneur who has achieved recognizable success and acts as a role model in business.

Next Steps

Edmonton’s nominee reception will take place ON June 23rd and Calgary’s reception will take place ON June 28th. Finalists will be named prior to the awards celebration in September, at which AWE will announce the recipients.

Quotes

“Congratulations to all nominees! We are excited to celebrate the incredible contributions made by women in our province as you build a better economy and communities. Each year, our award nominees are inspiring examples of leadership and innovation in Alberta. Thank you for taking the risk to pursue your aspirations and inspiring others along your journey.”

- Marcela Mandeville, CEO, Alberta Women Entrepreneurs

“ATB Financial is thrilled to celebrate the achievements of women in business. Your dedication to your goals and commitment to your dream has played a significant role in bringing resilience and transformation to Alberta's economy. Your passion inspires others and paves the way for future generations of women business owners and leaders. We congratulate all the nominees and wish you continued success!”

- Nikki Briggs, Head of Women in Business, ATB Financial

Quick Facts

Since 2012, the annual AWE Awards have recognized more than 800 women entrepreneurs in Alberta.

Over the last 26 years, AWE has worked with thousands of entrepreneurs through access to capital, connections and capacity.

Alberta small businesses contribute more GDP per capita than small businesses anywhere else in the country. In addition to providing jobs, these small businesses inject about $100 billion a year into the Alberta economy.

Alberta Women’s Entrepreneurs has received $3 million in grant funding through the Women’s Economic Recovery - Capital Growth Initiative. The Capital Growth Initiative is part of Alberta’s Recovery Plan, and an additional loan fund is now available to support women entrepreneurs who need easier access to capital. This investment will support more women who want to expand or start a business, helping diversify Alberta’s economy and creating new job opportunities throughout the province.

Alberta Women Entrepreneurs and Community Futures Network of Alberta will administer the loans from the Women’s Economic Recovery - Capital Growth Initiative.  Under the initiative, Alberta Women Entrepreneurs will provide capital to women in Edmonton, Calgary, St. Albert, Fort Saskatchewan and Sherwood Park, while Community Futures will provide capital to rural communities in Alberta. Under the initiative, up to $75,000 will be made available in repayable loans.

“Research proves that women entrepreneurs drive more than economic growth when their enterprises are successful – they change communities. Women were also disproportionately economically impacted by the pandemic. Access to capital for business investment for women entrepreneurs is essential to rebuilding Alberta's economy.”  - Marcela Mandeville, CEO of Alberta Women Entrepreneurs

“Alberta’s economy has momentum and we want to keep it going. By ensuring that women entrepreneurs in our province have more access to capital to help grow their business, we are building for the future. This is an important opportunity to create more jobs and a stronger business environment.” - Doug Schweitzer, Minister of Jobs, Economy and Innovation

Left to right: Doug Schweitzer, Minister of Jobs, Economy, and Innovation, Phyllis Maki, Executive Director at Community Futures Network of Alberta, Marcela Mandeville, CEO at Alberta Women Entrepreneurs, Whitney Issik, Associate Minister of Status of Women, Anna Liska, Owner at Always Occasions, Jewel Buksa, Board Chair at Alberta Women Entrepreneurs

About Alberta Women Entrepreneurs

Alberta Women Entrepreneurs (AWE) is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to enabling women to build successful businesses. AWE provides unique programs and services to women entrepreneurs through access to capital and connections, and support with building business capacity.

About Community Futures Network

Community Futures Network of Alberta has a rural focus and has helped rural Albertans launch, grow and scale their businesses. With 27 regional offices located throughout Alberta, Community Futures has significant reach into every corner of the province, including with First Nations, Métis Settlements, and Indigenous communities.

For more information:

Catherine Larose,

Marketing Lead, Alberta Women Entrepreneurs (AWE)

587 635 4278 ext.4278

catherine.larose@awebusiness.com

Nasim Morawej

Nasim Morawej first heard about Alberta Women Entrepreneurs after starting her engineering firm, Sentient Tools, in 2017. When positions opened up on the Board of Directors at Alberta Women Entrepreneurs shortly after, she decided it would be a good opportunity. That choice allowed her to navigate entrepreneurship while helping shape the future of it for women in Alberta.

Nasim’s curiosity and vision have made her an invaluable leader in creating a lasting impact on the community, and she emphasized how symbiotic the position has been for her. AWE encourages board members to participate in the various programs and seminars offered, and over her tenure, Nasim has taken the time to attend many of them, something she says has helped her develop a deeper understanding of the entrepreneurial space, and kept her inspired.

“It's a great opportunity because not only are you contributing and giving back to your community and you are also learning a lot. I have never seen any other board that is this organized and cares about the education of the board members this much.”

One of the most fulfilling aspects for Nasim has been the level of support she feels from the other board members. “That will be the most difficult part of stepping away from this, not to be a part of the group anymore,” she says. “It's been very difficult starting a new business and going through the pandemic. So it's been very inspiring to see all others who are very successful, talented people. The days when I just don't know if I can do this anymore, I pick up the phone and talk to other board members.”

After three years on the board contributing to both the recruitment and ownership linkage committees, Nasim is moving on to focus on a second business and her family. However, the relationships she’s created with AWE and her colleagues is something she plans to continue long into the future.

The COVID pandemic has reshaped nearly every aspect of our everyday lives. For business owners, the stress of a new normal has been compounded. The more intimate setting of a small business means that the impacts of hardship are apparent and often more personal.

“The pandemic has impacted small business tremendously,” says Jenifer Horvath, a Business Advisor with Alberta Women Entrepreneurs (AWE). “The changes in shopping habits and the shift to online means that a lot of small businesses had to pivot really quickly. And that’s household income for these businesses. In many cases, they may not have been able to feed their families because they didn't have the income they needed.”

Throughout the pandemic the federal government offered CEBA, the Canada Emergency Business Account, which provided loans for small businesses across the country. However, many entrepreneurs were not able to take advantage of it because they utilized contractors, something that was not covered by CEBA.

Luckily, AWE was given the opportunity by PrairiesCan to provide relief funding through the Regional Relief and Recovery Fund. This fund gave entrepreneurs greater flexibility in how the money can be used. As a result, the entrepreneurs were able to use the funds in a way that best suited their needs.

“There was also a chance to use the money for technology improvements,” says Amber Hall, a Financing Specialist with AWE. “We saw a lot of entrepreneurs of course taking advantage of that and some pivoting their business model to really get in there and try and still make sales.”

“I think for a lot of entrepreneurs, it's not just ‘if you build it, they will come’ anymore,” she says. “It's build it, work on it, and build it some more.”

In addition to monetary supports, AWE has been hard at work to create a network of support where entrepreneurs across the province can feel heard. They’ve connected  like-minded individuals who had a shared understanding of the challenges that entrepreneurs had faced over the past two years. These connections have been invaluable in maintaining resilience within the small business community.

“A lot of our demographic is women,” says Horvath. “They shoulder additional stresses in the majority of situations. When their kids were home from school, they were responsible for overseeing that while trying to run their businesses and dealing with the normal stress of the pandemic.”

Webinars have been a great way for entrepreneurs to access timely information and be able to ask questions in a group setting. AWE has offered topics such as government supports, upcoming regulations, and how to transition to a digital format.

For those who need a bit more personalized support, all of AWE’s advisors can be booked online for a free half-hour Zoom call or phone call where they give tailored advice and share any helpful resources. This allows women from both rural and urban settings to get the assistance they need as they continue to move their businesses forward. 

“I hope women entrepreneurs see AWE as a safe place to share what's going on, to feel heard, and to be given some resources and ideas to help them move forward,” says Horvath.

If you have further questions about AWE and any of its services, feel free to email info@awebusiness.com or check out their website at www.awebusiness.com.

Kathryn Joel, Get Cooking

Kathryn Joel has been running her business, Get Cooking, for the past 10 years, but like so many other businesses, when COVID hit she had to consider how to move to an online format. Since her website was designed with an in-person event model in mind, there were a lot of hurdles for her small team to figure out.  

“We found that we were doing so much manually because of our switch to virtual,” says Joel. “It was a lot of man hours, a lot of work, and not great for our customer experience.”

After reading about the Bold Leadership program through the AWE newsletter, Joel decided to take advantage of the push towards online and signed up for the eight-week course. The Bold Leadership program aims to help entrepreneurs find ways to strategically rethink their businesses through a digital lens. This will look different for every business and can cover anything from new software implementation to automation to digital marketing.

“In the beginning I thought I was just looking for a CRM (customer relationship management software). Then as I kind of went through the course, I realized there was so much more that I could do that would help my business,” says Joel.

What Joel originally thought would be simple website remodification turned into a completely new site with the ability for customer accounts. Now, providing Zoom links, recipes, and after-class recordings is all done automatically, saving her and her team over 10 hours per week while streamlining the customer experience.

However, for Joel the biggest takeaway from the program has been the continued access to a team of advisors.

“The coaching has been huge,” says Joel. “I always say to people that I started a business doing something I'm good at and that I love, but I had no previous business skills per say. I think that's probably the case with a lot of entrepreneurs. So to have had people to lean on as I pivoted and made some big decisions about my business was huge.”

That sense of community is what Bold Leadership program lead Lindsay Vanstone says makes this program unique and a good fit for any kind of business. No matter whether a business is product based or service based, big or small, every entrepreneur will find tools that are helpful.

“People will come in with different levels of digital knowledge in their business, and we meet them where they're at,” says Vanstone. “We help reduce that feeling of being overwhelmed, reduce that feeling of being isolated. They're able to connect with other entrepreneurs in this cohort program, and they can talk about their issues and ideas together.”

Going forward, Joel still plans to develop a CRM to further improve the experience her clients experience online as well as implement better digital tools for her staff’s payroll and timekeeping. Eventually, she would also like to consider moving to a subscription model, something she has been discussing with her coach.

“I have in my mind all the time all of the things that I learned, the different processes that I can digitize and automate to free up my time more,” says Joel.

“I would recommend any small-business owner do this no matter how small or big their goals are in terms of digitizing. I think it will help open your eyes to the possibilities. Even if you're just sitting, participating, and listening, being exposed to ideas like that and options for your business is huge.”

Today is a day of celebration, pride, gratitude, and optimism; today is International Women’s Entrepreneurship Day!

As an organization, our goal is to achieve parity for women entrepreneurs in Alberta and beyond. For more than twenty-five years, we have connected women with access to capital, training and workshops, business advising, and mentorship opportunities—supporting the entrepreneurial dreams of women in our communities.

Supporting women owned businesses is more than just a catch phrase. A 10% increase in women owned SMEs could have a $198 billion impact on annual Canadian GDP.[1] And globally, advancing women’s equality and opportunity could add $12 trillion to the global economy by 2025.[2] 

There is no doubt that our communities and economies are stronger when women are full participants in entrepreneurship. But why do organizations like AWE care so deeply about this cause?

Job Creation

Research shows that there is great diversity in the aspirations of women entrepreneurs, with an increasing number interested in pursuing high growth ventures. As opportunities for entrepreneurship increase, even more women-owned businesses will shift from start up phases, to growth or scaling phases. According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s 2020/21 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report, 30.2% of women entrepreneurs surveyed planned to hire six or more employees in the next five years, a number that has increased since 2019. [3]

Accomplishing Economic & Social Objectives

It is believed that businesses led by women blend both economic and social objectives, meaning that women entrepreneurs, while striving for strong financial performance, make Alberta (and beyond) a better place. [4] In fact, one motivator for pursuing entrepreneurship that is frequently reported by women entrepreneurs is the opportunity to do meaningful work.

Diversity in Leadership Styles

Increasing gender diversity in entrepreneurship provides the opportunity to activate a much wider range of leadership styles to propel their businesses toward success. A study from KPMG outlines the importance of situational leadership, or the ability to adjust one’s leadership style with fluidity depending on the circumstances, that is frequently demonstrated by women in leadership positions.[5] To go even further, a critical driver of business success is employing diversity of thought in order to solve complex problems.

Access to Financial Freedom

Entrepreneurship provides a pathway to generate income that differs from traditional work environments. More specifically, many women are motivated to pursue entrepreneurship as it enables increased flexibility that is more conducive to needs like work-family balance, or the ability to work from home. For those unable to participate in traditional workplaces due to personal constraints, entrepreneurship can be an avenue for many to achieve financial independence through means that are more accessible to them.

Products & Services that Fill Key Marketplace Gaps

30% of women entrepreneurs in Alberta report innovation in a product/service or market.[6] Innovation, radical or modest, is a central facet of successful entrepreneurship. With gender diversity comes a variety of perspectives and the ability to see and solve problems that may have been previously overlooked.

See It, Be It

Representation is paramount for the advancement of women entrepreneurship. As more women build successful businesses, they pave the way for future entrepreneurs to recognize the vast realm of possibilities that exist while breaking down barriers to entrepreneurship. The more we lift each other up, the clearer it becomes that these achievements are attainable for all. Look no further than to the Women Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub (WEKH) See it. Be it. Database, featuring profiles of successful women entrepreneurs across Canada, for proof that “women need to see successful women entrepreneurs so they can dare become one.”

Gender Equality in Work = Gender Equality in Society

As stated in the McKinsey & Company report, The Power of Parity: Advancing Women’s Equality in Canada, “the former is not possible without the latter.” Encouraging more women to be entrepreneurs is one of many initiatives that can make Canada a global leader in gender equality. Namely, increasing “the ability of women to be equal players in labour markets—to find employment, be compensated fairly for it, gain the skills and opportunity to perform higher productivity jobs, and share work outside the market economy equitably.”

The above reasoning is only the tip of the iceberg. The benefits of achieving parity for women entrepreneurs are endless. This International Women’s Entrepreneurship Day, let us celebrate how far we have come, dream boldly of where we may go, and act fiercely in our resolutions to advance women entrepreneurship here and now. #choosewomen

How bad does a septum piercing hurt? Generally, it is considered to be a moderately painful piercing. The pain is typically brief and tolerable and lasts only for a few seconds during the actual piercing process.

Some people report feeling a sharp pinch or pressure sensation during the piercing, while others may experience more of a burning or stinging sensation.

It’s important to keep in mind that pain is subjective and what may be a high level of pain for one person may not be as significant for another.

The pain level of getting a septum piercing can also be influenced by several factors, including the individual’s pain tolerance, the skill level of the piercer, and the size of the jewelry being inserted. Your experience may also be affected by the technique used by the piercer, as some piercers use clamps to hold the tissue in place during the piercing, which can increase the sensation of pressure.

After the piercing is done, it’s common to experience some swelling, soreness, and tenderness around the piercing site for a few days. Proper aftercare, such as cleaning the piercing regularly and avoiding touching or twisting the jewelry, can help to minimize discomfort and promote healing.

On a pain scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being no pain and 10 being the worst pain imaginable, most people who get a septum piercing report the pain level as being between a 3 and a 5. That being said, pain is a subjective experience, and what may be a high level of pain for one person may not be as significant for another.

It’s important to keep in mind that everyone’s pain tolerance and experience may vary, and while some people may find a septum piercing to be relatively painless, others may find it more uncomfortable. If you have concerns about the pain associated with a septum piercing, it’s a good idea to discuss them with your piercer beforehand.

Healing time will depend on each individual, though — for some people, healing will be complete after 2-3 months. For others, it can take up to 8 months. Before it heals, you need to take good care of your piercing to prevent any discomfort.

Here’s a general timeline of what to expect during the healing process:

It’s important to be patient and follow proper aftercare instructions to ensure that your septum piercing heals properly. If you experience any signs of infection or rejection such as excessive swelling, redness, or discharge, it’s important to seek medical attention as soon as possible.

Before you change your jewelry, it’s best to wait for 2-3 months to make sure the initial septum piercing is healed (and that there are no signs of infection). It takes some people longer to heal than others.

If there’s any doubt, check with your piercer or a doctor before deciding to switch to a new piece of jewelry.

You can use a wide variety of nose jewelry for septum nose piercings. The most common types of septum rings are curved barbells (horseshoe septum piercing), septum clickers, captive bead rings, and plain rings.

You can also go with a fake septum piercing if you want to avoid the pain and risks of nose piercings.

Ashley Piercing Jewelry Titanium nose ring curved barbell horseshoe 5 pcs $29.9, SHOP NOW.

Curved barbells are the most popular choice among all types of septum rings. They have a curve that takes the shape of an arch with two balls on either end. You can go with a traditional round bead or opt for other shapes and accents.

These barbells are sometimes called “horseshoe septum piercing” because they look like horseshoes.

Ashley Piercing Jewelry 16 gauge captive bead nose ring made of implant grade titanium $19.9, SHOP NOW.

Captive bead rings (CBRs) are a traditional choice for a septum piercing. CBRs are a full circle with a bead closing the loop. You can replace the bead with a pearl, birthstone, or another unique style. They are popular, coordinating easily with other pieces of jewelry.

Ashley Piercing Jewelry septum clicker nose ring 16G $21.9, SHOP NOW.

Septum clickers take the shape of a loop but have a hinged design that opens and closes. You unhinge the clicker, insert it through your nose, then close the hinge. Clickers may be a simple loop, have a dangling chain, or showcase a collection of gemstones. Septum clickers are easy to put in and look amazing.

Ashley Piercing Jewelry 14K gold septum piercing ring simple and minimalist $34.9, SHOP NOW.

When shopping for septum jewelry, you may come across “classic” septum nose rings or seamless rings. When they are inserted properly, they create a complete, closed shape. They may be a complete circle, or they may take other fun shapes like a heart, moon, or oval.

There is no bead or latch visible for a seamless look. They are typically just a metal hoop, which is ideal if you’re looking for something simple. They are the most minimalist among all types of septum rings.

Proper aftercare is crucial for ensuring that your septum piercing heals properly and reduces the risk of infection or other complications. Here are some general aftercare instructions to follow:

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